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This week marks the 40th anniversary of the start of Expo 86. Which was the principal reason The Rogue got started in the first place. Back then I was "gainfully" employed at Cominco as a computer programmer, reporting to - and generating custom reports for - the CFO, using a nifty program I had written in the old language PL/1. Cominco offered Expo passes to their employees at a great price. Then they decided to lay me off! So I had a little bit of severance money and a whole lot of free time to attend the World Fair. There I heard heaps of great folk and roots music from all across Canada, and from much further afield, too. I already had the radio show on CiTR, and musicians started to express their concern that after Expo they would no longer have a place to play on the west coast. 

Before Expo, the BC Liquor laws had prohibited bars from opening on Sundays. How could a city possibly run a world fair when the bars are closed one day a week? All of a sudden, there was a 7th night of programming to schedule every week. Back then there were quite a few venues around Gastown and in the city centre, and one of them, The Savoy, was run by the manager (at the time) of Spirit of the West and k.d. lang, Janet Forsyth. I knew her from my connections with SOTW, and she offered me / us any Sunday evening we would like, to present folk music, however we chose to define it.

So it took a few months to make it happen, but we kicked off 1987 with two nights of NL music with Figgy Duff. Not at The Savoy but at The Cultch. The late Noel Dinn of that band had pestered me into submission during Expo, pleading for a venue on the coast for his fine band. Thanks to people like Geoffrey Kelly of SOTW, and Jim and Jeanette McLaughlan at Celtic Distribution, a record label in Edmonton specializing in Scottish and Irish music, we had a great head start. Janet's offer of The Savoy proved pivotal, and in May 1987 we started a regular series, with Stephen Fearing as our "House Band"! Later in 1987 we brought in performers like The Tannahill Weavers, Eric Bogle, Andy Irvine, The Oyster Band, Tony Bird, Rare Air, James Keelaghan, Willie P. Bennett, Garnet Rogers, Good Ol' Persons, and Alasdair Fraser. We even co-presented The Pogues at The Commodore! You can explore the Rogue's history here

https://www.roguefolk.bc.ca/resources/history

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