VETERAN STATESMAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19719, 19 August 1927, Page 11

VETERAN STATESMAN.

MR. JOHN OLIVER DEAD.

BRITISH COLUMBIAN LEADER.

LAST WAR-TIME PREMIER. By Telegraph—P.iess Association—Copyright. (Received Aug. 18. 11.26 p.m.) A. and N.Z.-Sun. VANCOUVER, Aug. 18. Tho death has occurred of the Premier of British Columbia, Mr. John Oliver, who died at Victoria yesterday evening. Mr. Oliver had been ill for several months and had been obliged to retire in July from tho active leadership of his party. Mr. John Oliver was born in Derbyshire nearly 71 years ago. His education Wets restricted and at 11 he was employed as donkey-boy in a lead and iron mine operated by his father on the property of the late Duke of Devonshire. He also sold eggs at the country market and acted as farmers' agent as a sideline. The closing of the mine was the occasion for his coming to Canada with his parents and their large family. In a year in Ontario, John Oliver became an expert woodsman and quarry hand. After coming to the West in the 'seventies, overland through the United States, he took a job as axeman on the Canadian Pacific Railway, when it was being pushed over the Rockies to the Pacific terminal. He operated a threshing outfit later and was one of the first licensed engineers in British Columbia. Then" ho became a farmer and built his own dykes in the irrigation belt. An extempore speech at a political meeting brought Mr. Oliver into public notice and in 12 months he was a member of the Cabinet. He refused to turn Conservative with tho Mcßride Government., and in 1916 went into the Liberal Ministry, becoming Premier in the fol lowing vear. A close observer of the Australian and New Zealand experiments in social legislation, he introduced measures such as the minimum wage, woman suffrage and old-age pensions before any other province in Canada. Mr. Oliver's last political struggle, the biggest task of his career, was to fight the Dominion Government for better terms for British Columbia, which gained least of all the provinces from confedera tion.

Mr. Oliver was the last surviving wartime Premier in tho British Empire, and in March last he was again elected leader of his party at a Liberal convention in Vancouver.