It was Anzac Day in Australia yesterday, an important national holiday back home that honours those who fought and were slaughtered at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. I was thinking of this when John Mackie’s story in the Vancouver Sun today caught my eye. A 12-page letter written by Victor Odlum and dated May 1, 1915 had found its way to MacLeod’s Books almost a century later. In the letter, which included his hand-drawn maps, Victor wrote about the battle of Ypres which took place between April 22 and went on until the end of May.
Victor had sent the letter to his father Professor Edward Odlum via a friend to circumvent the censors. It’s a graphic account of the battle that left 2,000 Canadians dead and another 4,000 wounded.
“Four days without sleep, under too tense a strain to eat, and fighting all the time, day and night, under heavy shellfire, was trying,” wrote Odlum.
The Odlums were an interesting family. Odlum Drive in Vancouver’s Grandview area was named after Edward. According to Michael Kluckner’s Vancouver: The Way it Was, Edward helped produce the first electric light and the first public telephone in Canada while still at university. His passion was comparative ethnology and he travelled the world to study tribes in Australia and the South Pacific.
Edward built the fabulous turreted house at 1774 Grant Street around 1908.
Victor was born in 1880, fought in the Boer war at age 19, and on his return to Vancouver went to work for L.D. Taylor at the World. By 1905 he was editor-in-chief. When war broke out in 1914, Victor was in the first wave of Vancouver volunteers who went to France. Kluckner writes that he was a prominent advocate of Prohibition, and earned the nickname Pea Soup Odlum for replacing the soldiers’ rum ration with soup in the trenches.
Victor lived near his father’s house in Grandview before and on his return from WW1. He was also a financial whiz and was the Odlum behind Odlum Brown, a brokerage house founded in 1923. He bought the Vancouver Star around the same time. In the late ‘20s he traded up from his modest house at 2023 Grant Street and moved to Kitsilano. Later he and his wife moved to Rocklands at Whytecliff in West Vancouver.
In 1941 Victor was appointed High Commission to Australia. He died in 1971 aged 90.
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.
21 comments on “Vancouver’s Odlum Family and their Fabulous Houses”
Odlum’s Kitsilano address was 2530 Point Grey Road and the house is still there but with infill housing on both sides. Is that a cycle path I see in front of the house? (just kidding!)
Thanks for picking up my address typo (now fixed) and for the info on the infill housing. You don’t happen to have a photo do you?
Grandfather’s house in West Van was called Rockwoods. Not Rocklands. He donated all the houses on his property and land to UBC who sold it and now it is all high end houses. Rather a shame. I spent many summers here.
That is a shame, it looked rather beautiful. Thanks for the correction on the name.
Hi. Yes we were neighbours and he had asked that that land and house be given and used to the university, and some how the developers manipulated, with out consent, I might add , and bought out this property. We tried to petition but they in turn have well paid lawyers
Such a scam and a shame. So sorry to see this happen repeatedly in West Van.
I have some correspondence of the elder Professor Edward Odlum writing to his son Eddie in Lucknow, Ont. I know the professor died in 1935, and his son Ed died in 1974, but there seems to be confusion on multiple websites as to whether the younger Edward had the same first and middle names of his father (Edward Faraday) or was named Charles Edward Odlum. Also, is it true that the younger Ed was an accountant? Feel free to contact me at don6glickstein@gmail.com
Are these Odlum’s part of the first investment company in Vancouver. Now Odlum Brown. Just wondered. Lovely story, thanks.
Yes, Odlum Brown was started by my grandad and his friend Malcolm Brown in 1923
Stacey,
Would really like to chat with you
Just purchased a book with the inscription,”To my friend Brig. Gen. Victor Odlum from the author Edward Sears”.
Wonderful!
Very interesting. I’m presently working on a book about a fellow who served under Victor Odlum towards the end of the First World War. I was able to locate a chateau in France where in October 1918 Brigadier-General Odlum’s HQ was heavily shelled. The chateau was evacuated, but he and the subject of my book remained behind to man the radio sets. The current owners of the chateau allowed me to have a wander around.
Lucky you! It’s great that the Chateau in still there and that you could get inside.
Hello Paul, where is this chageau in France? I’m one of Victor Odlum’s grand-daughters and I now live in France.
Just finished reading an old book, Up and Down the North Pacific Coast published in 1914 and written by Rev. Thomas Crosby. This and his previous books of Methodist missionary efforts is fascinating for details of First Nations on the coast of BC and Alaska. One marvels at the damage done to these people’s by crude white culture (whiskey, gambling, prostitution and trade in young women) and the terribly judgemental, dismissive and disparaging characterizations of them as dirty, uncivilized, brutal heathens by Crosby and other missionaries . Despite this, one must also a knowledge that their efforts had great value in compensating for some of the damages inflicted by their kin. Governments if Canada and BC were absent entirely so the missionaries did yeoman’s work in providing guidance in organization, education and health but did so with thoroughly supremacist attitude, driven by an arrogance of destroying their “alien” cultures to be replaced by “white civilization.” The book is a troubling read, despair for the arrogance, admiration for the sacrifices and assistance but unsettling.
Then on page 394 of the 403 page book, Crosby elects to include a letter from Edward Odlum, a lengthy letter where Professor Odlum relates his experience in accompanying Crosby on the mission ship Glad Tidings for three months visiting mainly Indian communities from Victoria to Alaska. The letter is amazing in that finally someone gives some balance to the estimation of worth of the rich, complex and admirable cultures of these peoples. I expect Crosby didn’t see it as such but the letter struck me as diplomatically criticizing his entire world view and this from a fellow “missionary” but one with some education and capacity for respecting and admiring other cultures.
It’s no wonder then there was so much abuse, if it’s all run by missionaries with no one questioning them or how they are governing our families. These so called missionaries were praying on their vulnerability, and lack of education. Being very hypocritical to say the least.
Would really like to know much more about this family, my Nan emigrated in 1945 taking a passage from Liverpool to Canada her partner was Victor’s son, they had a daughter called Theresa who sadly died 1970 ish just before her Grandma – Victor’s wife
That was my uncle Don. Theresa was my second cousin Terry. Her death was very sad.
Hello Suella, I can help you with info if you like. Stacey
I spent summers across from Rockwoods and played with Terry and Victor in the 50’s, as well as the cousins.
I would like to contact young Victor, now about 74 years old, with an enquiry about Don’s house at that time.
You can DM me thru Facebook. I have already DM you.
Thanks Paddy B
Oh my goodness me Stacy, any Information would be amazing xx