Corsan's Turkish Hazel

George Hebden Corsan was an internationally known swimmer and a health food evangelist, and he spent forty years proving that nut trees would grow in Ontario. This is one of the trees that proved it. Corsan bought twelve acres here across 1911 and 1912 and turned them into a nut farm, eventually cultivating more than 400 varieties and collecting the name the Nut Man of Islington. Metropolitan Toronto bought the land in 1959 and made it Echo Valley Park, which is the only reason a private obsession is now something anyone can walk through. The Turkish hazel is one of five of his nut trees on the heritage register, alongside a hican, a black walnut and two more walnuts. The register recorded this one at 100 years old in 2017 and dates the planting loosely to the 1900s, without tying it to Corsan's own arrival, so early last century is as close as the evidence gets. A 1971 survey by the University of Toronto's Shade Tree Research Laboratory listed Turkish hazel among the nut species still growing on the site, which is the second account standing behind the register entry. Two honest gaps. All five trees share a single map pin, so the last part of the walk is a short hunt. And nobody has published a sighting since the 2017 nomination. If you find it, or work out which of the five is which, tell us.