Toronto Globe and Mail

September 23, 1999

(Reprinted in Pomona January, 2000)

FRED JANSON Pomologist, author, collector. Born near Heidelberg, Germany, on Feb. 5, 1922. Died in Burlington, Ont., of lung cancer on August 15,1999, aged 77.

The embroidered baseball cap read "Freddy the Fruit Freak". Carefully he would examine the tree to observe what the bugs were up to. Then he'd prop up a branch drooping with the weight of too many apples. He'd cut up a Merton Beauty, a favourite, to check for perfect ripeness. Then he would happily call Pippin, the orchard dog, or the goslings, to give them an apple taste test.

More than 240 different heritage and gourmet varieties of apples grew in Fred Janson's orchard near Rockton in southern Ontario. This autumn for the first time in over twenty years, the smiling -apple signs are not beckoning fruit lovers and curious visitors to taste of the bounty at Pomona Orchards.

With the loving support of our mother, Fred created a unique museum orchard with 600 trees. It contained varieties of apples centuries-old and modern, discovered in exotic locales and in the backyards of Ontario. Pomona was also home to the Pomona Book Exchange, specializing in pomological literature, including Fred's own publications.

Our parents came to Canada from Germany in 1951. "I always try something new", Fred often said, which was true in many areas of his life. Educated in the classics, he studied food sciences at the University of Guelph and then supported his family for many year as Production Manager for Neilson's, the Toronto-based ice-cream company. As children, our taste buds were constantly challenged, since inventing new and improved ice-cream flavours was part of our father's job.

At the same time his fruit-growing hobby was developing into a passion. Our garden was densely packed with many trees grafted into dozens of varieties. To pick carelessly was a serious offence, since we might have taken the only apple of a rare variety.

Fred retired at 55 to devote himself to his passion for growing, collecting and perfecting apples. However his orchard was getting too big for our suburban Toronto backyard. With the help of our mother (who was more inclined to the urban life than the rural), Fred started his historic project on 24 acres of rocky land in Rockton.

Apples were not limited to the orchard and Fred's library, but became a theme in all our lives, especially when it came to cards and gifts. Apple art and decor, games, puzzles and peeling gadgets filled the Rockton home. In an attempt to gain dad's attention, we even dressed as apple trees for Halloween.

In 1967, Fred founded NAFEX, a network of Canadians and Americans dedicated to sharing and furthering their knowledge of fruit and publishing their journal Pomona. The first Pomona newsletter was produced in our basement. NAFEX now has more than 3000 members and operates as a non-profit corporation.

Fred's dedication to developing the perfect apple led the Ontario Apple Marketing Commission to declare Pomona Orchards a private testing facility. Among its objectives were to produce highly-flavoured and aromatic varieties with a high vitamin- C content, to test and develop environmentally friendly pest controls, to assess methods of controlling weeds by mulching without fostering orchard mice, and to evaluate the symbiosis of apple trees and orchard geese.

Fred's "gathering of the rare" goes back to his boyhood days and includes more than apples. His collection of 3000 books impressed "the love of his life", our mother Walda, when she met him at the age of 18. "I'd never met anyone with so many books", she said. Book collecting turned into acquiring fruit-growing literature. The POMONA BOOK EXCHANGE developed by our parents became the only bookseller in Canada to specialize in pomological publications, receiving orders from around the world.

In the winter months after retirement, as Fred began work on his major "opus", his passions for apples and old books were integrated. Twenty years of research resulted in Pomona's Harvest (Timber Press 1996), "an illustrated chronicle of antiquarian fruit literature".

Here Fred the grower, food scientist and history buff, connects pomology to history and politics, to art and social ideas. The bibliography gives critical abstracts of more than 600 fruit sources before the Industrial Revolution. If we asked a question about the manuscript in progress, our father would happily pull a 1662 edition or an old woodcut from the shelf to illustrate a point.

His nurturing was not limited to fruit trees. Fred took very seriously the education of his four children and seven grandchildren. Joking to the end, in what he called his "famous last words" a few days before his death, he explained with passion that all life depends on plants and that only continuous botanical research can ensure the survival of the human species and the development of cures for diseases such as cancer. His dying hope was that one of his grandchildren would be as entranced by botany as he was.

"We don't grow apples to sell, we sell apples to grow others" Fred would say as he encouraged potential and loyal customers to taste the twenty-five or so varieties on display at any given weekend in the late summer and fall. "Taste before beauty" he told the grandchildren who turned up their noses at the strange shape and dull colour of Oaken Pin or Kandil Sinap apples, or dismissed the twelve bumpy but deliciously-flavoured varieties of russets. Along with the tasting came a history lesson or an anecdote.

This autumn, old customers coming by for their annual apple outing are saddened to hear about Fred's death. They recall with fondness Fred saying to them: "Here, taste this. This is an apple Shakespeare would have eaten".

Rose Janson

Astrid Janson