Through his various careers as Cambridge mathematics scholar, international adventurer, miner, logger, civil servant, and private businessman, Martin Allerdale Grainger was known as a brilliant, gregarious, and occasionally eccentric individual. His work of greatest historical significance is his contribution to the report of the Royal Commission of Enquiry on Timber and Forestry (1909-1910), which led to the passing of the Forestry Act of 1912 and the creation of the British Columbia Forest Service. His only substantial literary work is Woodsmen of the West (1908), a loosely structured, realistic narrative in which his own logging experiences are given the cast of fiction.

Grainger was born in London, England, on 17 November 1874. His mother, Isobel King Grainger, took him at the age of two to Australia to join his father, Henry Allerdale Grainger, who was serving as the agent general for South Australia. From St. Peter's school in Adelaide he obtained a scholarship...