296 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



SOME PROMINENT CANADIAN HORTICULTURISTS.— XVIII. 



MR. T. H. RACE, OK MITCHELL, ONT, 



T is a source of strength to the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association 

 that it numbers among its directors men occupying so many different 

 positions. We are thus able to come in touch with horticultural life 

 in its various phases, and reach the sympathies of a very wide circle 

 of readers. In the composition of our directorate, we have had, in 

 addition to practical fruit growers, ministers, merchants, lawyers, 

 judges, professors, farmers, florists, nurserymen. Civil Service employees, etc., 

 all, of course, practically engaged in some line of horticulture, to such an extent 

 that it amounted almost to a hobby. 



With this number of our journal, we have pleasure in introducing to our 

 readers another member of our directorate, who by vocation is an editor, but, 

 at the same lime, an ardent lover of the garden and a successful grower of 

 hybrid remontant roses. 



Mr. T. H. Race is editor of the Mitchell Recorder, a weekly paper, standing 

 well with the general public in Western Ontario, because so ably conducted, A 

 native of Northern England, he was born in 1846 ; and when a mere boy came 

 to Canada with his parents, who had purchased a farm in the vicinity of Port 

 Hope. He was educated in the excellent high school of that place ; and it was 

 while living on a farm in the neighborhood of that romantic town, in full view 

 of Lake Ontario, that he became enamored with the beauties of nature and first 



"Held communion with her visible forms." 

 There, while yet a boy, he was wont to revel with those poets of nature, Byron, 

 Bryant and Emerson, in the solitude of the beach and the adjacent ravines. 



His first lessons in the propagation and cultivation of fruit trees were 

 learned among the fruit growers and nurserymen of Rochester, about the time 

 of the Civil War. 



Mr. Race continued farming until he was twenty-six years of age, when he 

 entered upon business life. During the years he was thus occupied, he never 

 lost his fondness for the cultivation of fruit and flowers ; but it was not until he 

 went to Mitchell and engaged in the newspaper profession in 18S0, that he 

 became an enthusiast in fruit culture. His particular hobby is hybrid remontant 

 roses, of which he grows some fifty or sixty varieties. 



For many years he has been a reader of the Canadian Horticulturist 

 and of the reports of our Association, but he first attended one of our 

 meetings at Hamilton in i88g, and gave a paper on "The Garden." The follow- 

 ing year he was elected director for the counties of Perth and Middlesex, and the 

 City of London. In December, 1891, on the election of Mr. A. H. Pettit, as 

 President, Mr. Race was elected Vice-President, a position of honor which his 

 previous literary training and practical experience has well qualified him to fill. 



