The youngest daughter of a prominent political family, Elizabeth Blanche Clapham was born in 1864 in Quebec. She moved with her family to British Columbia in 1905. She married Edmund Burke Roche in 1912, when she was 48. The extravagant wedding ceremony at Christ Church Cathedral received attention in the local media. After their wedding, Edmund and Elizabeth purchased a home where they would live the rest of their lives. The house, known as Camsona, still stands today on Pemberton Road in Victoria. Elizabeth might have been friends with Kathleen O’Reilly, as the two were close in age. A calling card belonging to Elizabeth’s sister, Marion Crowe Baker, is also in the collection at Point Ellice House. After a long illness, Elizabeth passed away in 1935 and is buried in Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery.
List of Calling Cards
The Point Ellice House collection contains hundreds of calling cards left for the O’Reilly family by visitors. This initial research was conducted by Public History students at the University of Victoria, and these biographies constitute only a portion of the individuals represented by the calling cards within the collection.