News from our rich agriculture history

Little is known of Charles A. Zavitz’s early life save for his birth in Coldstream Ontario, 1863. By the 1880s however he had left Middlesex County for the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, Ontario. In 1887 the University of Toronto agreed to issue Bachelor of Science in Agriculture degrees to a select and competent class of O.A.C. diploma graduates. One of only five inaugural graduates Zavitz quickly secured employment at the school as the assistant superintendent of experiments.

During his first years Zavitz conducted valuable research and secured the construction

William Vanstone was born on February 2, 1833 in Devonshire, England. As a family, the Vanstones had little money and no property, and so there were few prospects for William but to become one of millions of landless labourers in Britain. However, some of his family had left the mother country and found success in the Empire’s overseas colonies. Some of his cousins went to Australia, but most of them had ended up in British North America, in the province of Upper Canada (modern-day Ontario). It was there that William would seek the opportunity he did not have in his home country. In