Victor Odlum - Prominent Citizen of Vancouver

Prominent Citizen of Vancouver

After the war Odlum returned to Vancouver, where he became a prominent financier, founding the investment firm Odlum Brown in 1923 with Colonel Albert "Buster" Brown. He also served as a member of the Provincial Legislature from 1924–1928. At the same time, he returned to the world of journalism, becoming the owner of the Vancouver Star.

As with his rivals in the business at the time, Odlum used the paper to aggressively promote his views and advance his pet political causes, such as the temperance movement, as well as descending to sensationalist yellow journalism to boost circulation. In 1924, his paper stirred up anti-Chinese fervour by suggesting a Chinese houseboy employed by a posh Shaughnessy neighbourhood couple had murdered a Scottish nursemaid, Janet Smith, employed in the same household. Although the evidence instead suggested that the nursemaid had been accidentally killed by one of her employers during a domestic dispute, Odlum's paper suggested the Chinese houseboy, Wong Foon Sing, who had discovered the body, was the guilty party. Wong was subsequently kidnapped by vigilantes and tortured to elicit a confession; upon being freed, he was charged by police, but eventually released due to a total lack of evidence against him.

Odlum was virulently anti-Bolshevik and anti-union, and shut down the Star rather than give in to his employees, who had unionized and refused to accept a pay cut. During the 1930s, he helped coordinate and train Special Constables hired to break a strike on Vancouver's waterfront.

After the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was formed in 1936, Odlum served on its board of governors until the outbreak of World War II.