Those pears scream quality at me when I see them. The first thing that popped in my mind was conference pears though of course I can’t be sure What they are yet. The wopsided neck that’s thin is typical of many good quality pears. Some have a red blush. Can you take a picture of the wood itself they sent you? When I see that slender neck on a few of those pears I can say with certainty there is no bad tasting pear with that feature. Sue realizing your zone 3 part of me wants to think they must have came from the pear breeding program in Canada. I’ve looked at a few other sources and came up empty handed https://www.google.com/amp/s/laidbackgardener.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/pears-for-cold-climates/amp/
http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/4134934/lets-talk-about-hardy-pears
If they were zone 4 pears There are many more candidates. The most likely zone 4 pear would be tyson which is ancient and very high quality The pears you may not have heard of and should consider growing
This picture is tyson taken by tallcloverfarm.com
There is a possibility it’s a seedling from this program Canadian Pears Enie, Menie, Miney, Moe, Phileson but that will be difficult to determine. My small yellow pears may be from that program but of course that has yet to be determined. Those unknown pears can be seen in this thread Here comes the 2016 apple and Pear harvest!. High quality pears are rare. Thousands of pears are grown in the world but it’s estimated less than 100 of those are high quality.