DR. MACDANIELS: That might be. I was told during the First World War when they wanted straight-grained spruce for airplanes they found they could tell a straight-grained spruce from a spiral, so they wouldn't waste their time getting logs with spiral grain.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION
PRESIDENT BEST: The first item on the program is the life story of the Late Reverend Crath and the Crath Carpathian walnut in Ontario. We are going to have Mr. L. K. Devitt of Toronto, Canada, get into this subject for us. Mr. Devitt did know Reverend Crath since 1934. Mr. Devitt supported his expedition to the Ukraine in 1934. He has a few slides for us and then he is going to talk to us about a number of features.
Mr. Devitt is in the school system in Toronto, and he is a graduate of the University of Toronto, and so without further introduction, take over and give us your story.
MR. DEVITT: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, when I wrote a letter to the secretary of the Association about Reverend Crath, I thought it was also fitting that at the next meeting I should come here and say a little more about the life and work of the Reverend Crath and the Crath Carpathian walnut in Ontario and the progress for the last 20 years.
Late Rev. Paul C. Crath
L. K. DEVITT, Toronto, Ontario
Rev. Crath was born near Kiev in Greater Ukraine, Poland, in 1883. He was the son of an Agricultural College Professor. It is assumed that he enjoyed the life of the upper class, being a graduate of two universities; and speaking fluently at least six languages of Central and Western Europe, and having travelled almost everywhere in Europe. He possessed a wide knowledge of the peoples, the history and the culture of all the Central European Countries.
He migrated to Canada in 1908 and settled in Western Canada. He was employed at various, clerical occupations before entering the Theological College of the University of Manitoba from where he graduated as a Presbyterian minister in 1922.
He was the minister of a Ukranian Presbyterian Church in Toronto for two years. From 1924 to 1936 he served as a Presbyterian missionary in Poland, organizing some thirty missions in Galicia and Volynia. For some years before the war, he spent considerable time on a farm near Welcome, Ontario, building up a European Nursery and in the winters he served with the Home Missions mostly in Western Canada. During the last ten years of his life he had to curtail his activities more and more, owing to poor health and a heart condition.