Robert OLver Profile

Robert Olver has more than 30 years of experience as a journalist and author, writing for major news organizations such as The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun, Reuter News Agency in London, and The Sun of London. Olver's first novel, The Bicycle Tree, was published by McClelland and Stewart and his non-fiction work, The Making of Champions, was published by Penguin-Viking in 1991. His freelance work, fiction and non-fiction, has appeared in many publications, including The Saturday Evening Post, Vanity Fair, Maclean's magazine and Chatelaine. Awards include The Macmillan-Bloedel Award for Excellence for a series on drug addiction and two Dunlop Awards for news features on social issues related to sports. Olver and his wife, Kathy, are dedicated gardeners. Their garden, known as The Cat Garden, was started in 1991 and has several times been featured on The Discovery Channel's TV series The Guerilla Gardener, on CTV's Mark Cullen Gardening, and in many newspaper and magazine articles. In 1990, the Olvers founded The Catkin Willow Fund for Stray Cats, which mission is to rehabilitate abused and abandoned cats and to work with feral and even wild cats as well. Our permanent feline community is limited to 30 at present, but we have helped hundreds of cats since Catkin Willow began.