Langley resident Helen Odin was amused when she learned it was her 100th birthday.
“Today, you’re 100,” her daughter, Joanne, informed her.
“Who said so?,” Helen demanded.
“You are 100,” a slightly flustered Joanne insisted, smiling.
“Yeah, I know,” Helen smiled back.
“You’re sweet,” Joanne said, and gave her mom a kiss.
“Did you do something wrong?” Helen teased.
“I hope I didn’t,” Joanne laughed. “I know you’ll punish me if I do that”
It was a few days before the actual Dec. 19 date that four generations of Helen’s family gathered together to celebrate the great-grandmother’s landmark birthday at a Murrayville restaurant on Sunday, Dec. 17.
Next to her cake were framed birthday wishes from King Charles and Governor General Mary Simon.
A family history noted Helen Marion McQuarrie Odin was one of seven children, born in Manitoba on Dec. 19th 1923.
Life was difficult growing up on the prairies during the Depression, so the family eventually moved to B.C. and lived on Nichol Road in Newton when it was mostly farmland.
After the Second World War, Helen met Joseph Odin, a veteran of the D-Day invasion.
They married and lived in New Westminster and Burnaby, raising Joanne and her brothers, Wayne and Doug.
Helen and Joseph bought and renovated a heritage house on Marine Drive in White Rock, where the couple went on to celebrate their 7oth wedding anniversary before moving to Langley.
Helen and Joseph, who passed away in 2019, were well-known in White Rock.
Joseph is remembered for maintaining and expanding the area up the hill from East Beach near their home, an area some called “Odin’s point,” and he was nicknamed by a neighbour as the “unofficial mayor of Marine Drive.”
Joanne told the Langley Advance Times the pattern established by her parents, of having two boys with a girl as the middle child, has been repeated twice.
“I have the same; only one daughter and two boys on each side, and my daughter has the only one daughter and two boys on each side,” Joanne laughed. “Mama always thinks that’s special.”
Her fondest memory of her mom as a child was “when she would organize birthdays for me. and invite all my friends - a special time.”
Now, it was her turn to do the same for her mother.
“I lived in France for the last 50 years and I come [to visit] regularly, but organizing this party for mom is very, very special to me,” Joanne said.
Older brother Wayne called his mother “a great person.”
Asked for a favourite memory, Wayne said it was hard picking just one, but for him it was “her being there for me when I was in my times of need, and we’ve tried to be there for her in her time.”
Niece Julie McQuarrie, whose dad was Helen’s brother, said “Auntie Helen and Uncle Joe had a beautiful quaint house on Marine Drive in White Rock. So we’ve got lots of happy memories.”
She described her “Auntie Helen’s” birthday as a milestone, “and for us it’s touching because she is the last of that generation.”
Julie noted they are a long-lived family.
“Helen’s mom lived to be 91, I believe, and Helen had two sisters who lived to be 100 as well, so we’re hoping the longevity lasts for the rest of us,” Julie smiled.
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