Chief Surveyor To Retire This Month

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31162, 12 September 1966, Page 12

Chief Surveyor To Retire This Month

Mr J. M. Grant, chief surveyor with the Lands and Survey Department in Christchurch since 1960, will retire at the end of this month after more than 40 years’ service. He has worked in every South Island land district and in Gisborne, Wellington and Taranaki. Mr Grant was bom at New

Plymouth in 1906, his father coming from Forfarshire, Scotland, and his mother from the Shetland Islands. He was educated at the Tokomaru School and Gisborne I High School. I He joined the Lands and (Survey Department as a clerical cadet in May, 1923. His (commencing salary was £7O a .year with a £4O lodging allow lance.

He transferred to Wellington as a draughting cadet in September, 1924, and was appointed a survey cadet two vears later. He went to Hokitika in March, 1927, for bush exnerience.

Mr Grant first came to Christchurch in 1928, and was then transferred to Wellington as a computer in 1929. He completed his surveying examinations in 1931 and was appointed staff surveyor in Nelson in 1931 at a saiarv of £247 10s with a field allowance of 3s a day less 10 per cent.

He returned to Christchurch in 1945 and held apnointments of senior surveyor. inspecting surveyor and acting land transfer surveyor until 1955 when he became chief surveyor in Blenheim He held the same anpointmont in New Plymouth from ( 1957 to 1960 when he took up

his present appointment in Christchurch. During his term in Nelson Mr Grant was engaged in all types of survey work, mainly in heavy bush country at Karamea, Westport. Murchison and Reefton. He was in (charge of topographical map [ping in Marlborough and Neilson during the Second World War. While in Canterbury from 1945 to 1954 he was engaged mainly on surveys of returned servicemen’s farms. Mr Grant is a past ehairman of the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration and a councillor of the Dominion (body. He was elected Do- : minion councillor of the piew Zealand Institute of Surveyors in 1962 and re-elected in 1965.

He is a member of the Christchurch Regional Planning Authority and technical advisory committee and Summit road protection committee of the authority.