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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Index of Glasgow Men (1909)