3!o The Canadian Horticulturist. 



SOME PROMINENT HORTICULTURISTS XXII. 

 Mr. Wellington Boulter. 



R. BOULTER was born of U. E. L. stock on the f.rm 

 now owned by him, in the Township of Sophiasbiru r . 

 Prince Edward County, on the 14th February, 1838. In 

 his early days he had only the slim advantage of attend- 

 ing the common school through the winter months, hav- 

 ing,as was then usual, to work early and late on the farm. 

 His father, the late George Boulter, had planted one of 

 the first nurseries in the Midland district in 1818. He brought up from 

 Montreal the first Famuese and Bourasa apple trees planted in the county, some of 

 which are still bearing fruit, and from them many grafts have been taken. Mr. 

 Boulter early evinced a fondness for fruit growing ; and now he has on his farm 

 over 2,000 apple, and 400 pear and plum trees, besides some eight acres rasp- 

 berries and strawberries. This apple orchard has been splendidly kept and is 

 one of the finest in the county. 



Believing that we could grow as fine fruits in this Canada of ours as our 

 cousins in the United States, and that they could be hermetically sealed to com- 

 pare with any American goods he started the first canning factory in Eastern 

 Ontario at Picton in 1882, and through his well-known energy his goods were 

 soon pushed to the front. At that time nearly all the canned goods used in 

 Canada were imported from the United States, but this was no help to fruit, 

 growers in Canada, and in 1883 a convention was called by Mr. Boulter, at 

 Hamilton, of all the packers of canned goods in Canada, and he was unanimously 

 chosen its first President, a position which he has filled for ten years. He went 

 to Ottawa and succeeded in getting the present canned goods' law placed on the 

 statutes with the duty removed from tin plates. At present, scarcely any 

 American canned goods are now found in Canada. Those canning factories, 

 scattered over Canada, furnish a good market for our fruits and vegetables. 

 For the past five years he has been exporting the surplus goods to England and 

 Germany, competing there with American goods. Mr. Boulter has always been 

 in favor of a heavy duty being placed on all fruits coming from the United States 

 into Canada, believing Canadians should have our own home markets ; and he 

 has always done what he could for them. At the last annual meeting of the 

 Fruit Growers' Association, in his absence, he was elected as one of the Directors 

 to represent the Counties of Hastings, Prince Edward, Lennox and Addington, 

 to succeed the late P. C. Dempsey, Esq., who for many years occupied that 

 position, and was also at one time President of the Association. 



