He represented Oxford South in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Liberal member from 1867 to 1876.

He was born in Queens County, New Brunswick in 1823, grew up there and went to London in Upper Canada in 1836, where he became a carpenter.

After fire destroyed his lumber yard in Orillia in 1871, he set up a sawmill and planing mill near Fort William in partnership with a Toronto lumberman and two lawyers from Ingersoll.

After Fort William was selected as a major station on the Canadian Pacific Railway, this company profited from land sales to the government and contracts.

The residents of nearby Port Arthur protested that this site had been chosen as a result of Oliver's political connections; a federal Liberal government was in power at the time.