During the years spent in Poland Reverend Crath must have given the idea of growing hardy walnuts in Ontario and the Northern States considerable thought. He examined trees and nuts wherever he went; and continued gathering information each year. When I first met him I could see he had given walnut growing a great deal of study. He had great faith in his idea, and when leaving on his expedition 1934 he felt he was on a great mission. It should be remembered he made this arduous trip without pay and that he made very little money from the sale of walnut seeds or trees. No one did for that matter. It is also significant that in bringing these Carpathian walnuts out of Poland at that time, 1934, he did something that could never be done again. The trees he saw then probably went into rifle butts for use in World War II. The introduction of these walnuts into Ontario, met with varied success. Many bought them on a trial basis and were eventually rewarded; some looked on with skepticism and ridicule and a few thought that the growing of walnuts in Ontario was impossible. The intervening years, however, have brought forth a different picture. These seedling walnut trees are now bearing in Ontario and as late Reverend Crath predicted more than half of them are producing fair to good quality nuts. This is also true in the United States. In Ontario they grow well in the commercial apple districts and with variations mature nuts fully in 90 to 120 days (between Sept. 15 to October 15.) All of the best varieties should now be propagated by grafting to produce hundreds of hardy Crath Carpathian walnut trees. This project should always be one of the foremost with the members of the Northern Nut Growers Association. Twenty years from now and later, the number of hardy walnut trees producing nuts (Crath strain) should make a living monument to this obscure missionary—Rev. Paul C. Crath.
PRESIDENT BEST: Thank you very much, Mr. Devitt, for this very intriguing story. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. And we want to keep in touch with you, and we want to keep hearing from you, because you have got a big job to do yet.
MR. DEVITT: There is only one thing, ladies and gentlemen: I don't want to run into 5,000 letters to answer. Keep my name out of this. That is my walking-out request now. That's the story. I am going to continue to keep collecting samples. I hope some day to have a number myself of the best, and I might come back again sometime. I can't say every year; circumstances may be that I can't come. However, it's been a great pleasure for me to be here. I have wanted to come for 20 years, and I thought this year that I should come, because I am on this special mission of Reverend Crath's. Now you know what's going on in Ontario.
MR. SLATE: Mr. Chairman, I think the Association will answer the 5,000 letters, if he will ask.
MR. DEVITT: I didn't ask. Are there any questions?
DR. MCKAY: I'd like to ask a question. Was any scion wood ever brought over?
MR. DEVITT: There was some scion wood brought over by the Reverend Crath in the spring of 1935, and it was brought over on the boat. I remember in those years only one that grew on a tree belonging to Mr. Corsan. I don't think the other scion wood proved any good at all.
MR. STOKE: I got a little of that scion wood, and it had been waxed. The bark was nice and green, but the buds were dead.
MR. CALDWELL: Do you have a plantation of young, producing trees?
MR. DEVITT: No. My place, where I had those trees is now $3 million worth of buildings on 15 acres. You'd be looking down a street. They moved in in 1944, and built up 15 acres where I had one acre in the 15.