Grainger had a gentle, humorous talent for describing his friends, his much-loved horses and the simple joys of life in the open air. He regularly escaped from his Vancouver office in the 1920s and 1930s to camp in the North Cascades.

M. Allerdale Grainger is best known for his wonderful book Woodsmen of the West, about life on the BC coast at the turn of the century. The articles and letters in Riding the Skyline were never published in his lifetime and remained in the archives for 50 years. They have been edited and arranged by Peter Murray, whose other books include The Vagabond Fleet and Homesteads and Snug Harbours: The Gulf Islands.

Martin Grainger's profile page

Peter Murray was born in Vancouver on July 25, 1928 of Scottish-English descent. With 30 years experience in the newspaper business, chiefly with the Victoria Times Colonist, Peter Murray also edited a volume of the collected columns of Jack Scott, called Great Scott!, and a collection of M.A. Grainger's previously uncollected writing entitled Riding the Skyline. The Vagabond Fleet is Murray's history of West Coast sealing schooners and the dispute between Britain and the United States in the 1880s and 1890s over what is known as "pelagic sealing". During the "Bering Sea" controversy, Britain and the United States came close to war over the hunting of fur seals in open waters. A fleet of 150 sailing vessels converged on Victoria to hunt the northern fur seal. An international treaty in 1911 finally slowed the slaughter. Many of the seals that were killed indiscriminately sank before they could be recovered. Home from the Hill is a 'triography' on biographical materials pertaining to the lives of M.A. Grainger, Clive Phillips-Wolley and Warburton Pike, all of whom were authors who wrote about British Columbia.

Peter Murray's profile page