636 Keefer Stree was originally the Good Shepherd Mission – the first Anglican mission for a Chinese congregation in Canada. The exact year of the construction is uknown but it would have been in the late 1920s or early 1930s. In 1935, the little church’s south side wall was knocked out and the building was expanded toward the back lane. The Good Shepherd Mission appears in several of the books of prize-winning author Wayson Choy – The Jade Peony, and Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood. At one point Choy actually lived right next door, in the house to the west, and he played at the mission as a child. The church accommodated day care, kindergarten and many other children’s and important social activities and services until about 1980 when it sold the building to the Vietnamese Alliance Church, which occupied the building for 16 years. This is why the building is known in the neighbourhood as “the Vietnamese Church.” In about 1996 the church was bought by a pair of artists who made it their live/work studio. In 2002 they sold it to its current owner. The building’s main architectural feature is the Douglas fir scissor-truss ceilings.