JOHN ANDREW WESTWOOD OLIVER

    BORN in Glasgow in 1861, Mr. Westwood Oliver claims kinship on the maternal side with the Brown clan, including Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh ("Rab"), his mother being a great-granddaughter of the famous John Brown of Haddington. He was educated in Glasgow at private schools, and was first put to business, but at the age of 18, having already contributed in a tentative way to various periodicals, he went to London to follow a literary career. In 1882 he started the Science Monthly, an illustrated magazine devoted to the popular exposition of all branches of science, but after two or three years the enterprise was brought to an end by the failure of the publisher. In 1884 he published "Astronomy for Amateurs" (Longmans), a book which had considerable success, and in the same year he paid his first visit to Canada as special correspondent of the Glasgow Herald at the Montreal Meeting of the British Association. For the next two years he contributed very largely to the review columns of the Herald, and in 1886 made an exhaustive tour through Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific, writing a series of articles in the Herald entitled "Through our Western Empire." Shortly afterwards he was appointed Colonisation Commissioner in this country for one of the Canadian railways, an appointment which put a stop to journalistic work for a period of five years. Third and fourth extensive tours through Canada were made in 1889 and 1891, and in 1894 he joined the staff of the N.B. Daily Mail as musical, dramatic, and art critic. His work in this capacity became one of the notable features of the paper, and was as enlightening and satisfactory to the public as it was just and discriminating to the artists. He remained on the staff of the Mail until the absorption of that paper by the Record. In 1897 he started the Scots Pictorial, a weekly illustrated paper with high literary and artistic aims, which was hailed as resuscitating some of the best features of the Scots Observer, and which he continued to edit for nine years. At the same time Mr. Oliver was Managing Director of the Scots Pictorial Publishing Co., which published Mr. J.J. Bell's phenomenally successful "Wee Macgreegor," and brought out most of that author's earlier books. The Scots Pictorial having changed hands, Mr. Oliver moved to London, and early in 1907 joined the staff of The Field, The Queen, and other publications of the Windsor House firm.

    In addition to his Canadian journeys Mr. Oliver has travelled extensively on the Continent. He is married, has one little daughter, lives mostly now in London, and is a good amateur pianist.

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