War link renewed

Press, 1 November 1977, Page 11

War link renewed

A chance meeting in Winnipeg 37 years ago has been recalled by the visit to Christchurch of Dr E. C. Martin, who is in charge of bee research in the United States. Doctor Martin now works in Maryland, but in the summer of 1940 was with the entomology department at the University of Manitoba.

One day in 1940, as he recalls, he was sitting in a crowded cafeteria at the university when Mr (now Dr) I. D. Blair, from Lincoln College, came along with a ray looking for somewhere o sit. Dr Martin was sitting >y himself and pointed to an mpty chair, and so the two nen fell into conversation.

Doctor Blair, who retired n 1973 after 41 years assocition with Lincoln, had been m his way to Britain in 1939 o study for a doctorate of hilosophy, under a Maclillan Brown Scholarship, at nperial College, London University when war broke nt. The college was closed )wn for the war, and so he .gan his studies at the

Rothamsted experienmental station, Hertfordshire. However, he later moved to Canada to complete his studies, and it was then that his meeting with Dr Martin occurred. Doctor Blair told Dr Martin that he had just arrived in Winnipeg and was in the unhappy position of having no money because his cheque had been sent on to England. At the time, Dr Martin was trying to make a canoe trip every year and invited the New Zealander to join him, saying that by the time they returned in two or three weeks his money would have turned up. Then followed a trip of some 320kb along rivers and through lakes in White Shell Reserve, near the border of Ontario and Manitoba. Doctor Blair is a keen fishsome 320 m along rivers and along the way to fish. When they returned, Dr Blair’s money had arrived

and the two men ended living in the same boarding house. Doctor Martin also recalls that Dr Blair wrote an essay about their canoe journey from notes he had made in his diary and won a competition for which the prize was $lOO. In the intervening 37 years, Dr Martin said that he had often talked about coming to New Zealand, and at last had made the journey. Doctor Martin has come on to New Zealand after attending an international Apimondia congress in Adelaide. It is held every two years, and attracts commercial and hobbyist beekeepers and people associated with the industry in research, extension and manufacturing. There were about 1500 people, from 46 countries, at the Adelaide gathering. Before taking up his present post in 1975, Dr Martin was professor of agriculture at Michigan State University for 25 years.