Heritage Register
Rockland
1745 Rockland Avenue (ex-84 Rockland Av)
Ashton
Built
1899
Heritage-Designated 2010
For: Ernest Victor Bodwell*
Architect: Francis Mawson Rattenbury
Contractor: William Gregson
ARCHITECTURE:
“Residence on Rockland avenue for E.V. Bodwell:
W. Gregson, contractor: price about $4,000. Building to be
rockfaced stone, shingled walls, hall panelled in cedar. F.M.
Rattenbury architect.” Canadian Contract Record, 27 Sept. 1899 pg. 4.
This 2½-storey house is one of Victoria’s best examples
of the Shingle Style, a mixture of American and British Arts
& Crafts influences. It has a steeply-pitched, side-gabled
roof with a prominent, front-facing
pedimented gable over a nine-light
leaded and mullioned window bay;
a small vent in the gable has been
replaced by a bank of three narrow
windows under the original semicircular
motif. To the left of the bay
is a parapet or decorative balcony
immediately above a bank of three
small windows. To the left of the
parapet is a smaller pedimented
gable above two windows. There is
a complete absence of visible eaves, rafters or bargeboards.
A denticulated belt course separates the rustic stonework
of the main floor from the shingles above. The body of the
house originally had brown shingles which blended with the
roof in typical Shingle Style. The attached carriage house on
the left has been enclosed and is now a garage. The curved
roofline and the small pyramidal hood above the front door
emphasises the unusual triangular composition of this façade.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1899-1900: Ernest Victor Bodwell, 1630 Rockland
Av. “Residence Changes Hands - The handsome
residence erected on Rockland avenue for E.V. Bodwell,
QC has been purchased by L.P. Duff who will almost
immediately occupy the same, after certain alterations and
improvements have been made.” VDC 30 January 1900 pg.5
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1900-06: E.V. Bodwell’s partner, Sir Lyman Poore Duff
(b. Meaford, ON 1865-1955) and Elizabeth Eleanor (née
Bird, 1865-1926) married in 1898 in Ontario. Lyman studied
law at Osgoode Hall, Toronto, and was called to the bar in
Ontario in 1893, and BC in 1895. Before marriage, Duff
lodged at 321 Belleville St, James Bay, with young lawyers
Francis Brooke Gregory, later of the BC Supreme Court,
and Gordon Hunter, later Chief Justice, BC Supreme Court.
Lyman and Hunter became partners, then in 1897 Lyman
joined the firm of Bodwell & Irving. He was appointed to
the BC Supreme Court in 1904, then the Supreme Court of
Canada in 1906; the Duffs then moved to Ottawa. In 1914
he was made a member of the Privy Council of the United
Kingdom. In 1933 he became Canada’s Chief Justice, and
the following year, King George V made him a Knight of
the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
In 1931 and 1944 he served as Canada’s acting Governor
General, the first Canadian in the post. Sir Lyman retired as
Chief Justice in 1944 and remained in Ottawa. He visited
Victoria in 1938 and was given a tour of 1745 by its owner,
Eleanor Gray.
1906-10: The Hon Robert Garnett Tatlow (b. Co
Down, IRL, 1854-1910), a Vancouver MLA 1900-09 and
Minister of Finance and Agriculture in Richard McBride’s
government, and Elizabeth Mary (née Cambie, b. Quebec
1871-1944), the daughter of CPR engineer Henry Cambie,
for whom Vancouver’s Cambie St was named, married in
1894. Robert came to Montreal in 1870, joined the militia
and came to Victoria in 1879 with “B” Battery, stationed
at Beacon Hill Park. Tatlow Park in Kitsilano, Vancouver,
was named for him. Robert died after his horse trap struck
a telephone pole. Elizabeth returned to Vancouver.
1911-36: James Albert Lindsay (b. Ontario c.1866-
1930) came to BC in 1888, then had an orange grove in
California. He moved to Vancouver, was a purser on James
Dunsmuir’s SS Amelia, then Dunsmuir’s manager and
secretary. He retired in 1911 when the Dunsmuirs sold
their interests. In 1909 he married Naomi Ellen Adair, of
Brantford, ON. She died in London, ENG, in 1920. James
lived here until 1929, but died in London. His second
wife Mary Blythe Lindsay (1863-1936), lived here until
her death.
1938-64: Dr. Thomas Wesley Alvin Gray (b.
Millbrook, ON 1897-1986) and Eleanor Elizabeth (née
Hislop) married in St. Thomas, ON in 1926. They lived at
1064 Beverley Pl, Rockland, in 1933-37. Dr. Gray
died in Victoria.
* From research by Jim Wolf.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:
• Map of Victoria's Heritage Register Properties
• Rockland History
• Rockland Heritage Register
• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Three: Rockland, Burnside, Harris Green,
Hillside-Quadra,
North Park & Oaklands
