Moving Natures: Mobility and Environment in Canadian History

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2016-05 Moving Natures: Mobility and Environment in Canadian History Bradley, Ben; Young, Jay; Coates, Colin M University of Calgary Press Bradley, B., Young, J. & Coates, C.M. (2016). "Moving Natures: Mobility and Environment in Canadian History." Canadian history and environment series; no. 5. University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51203 book http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca MOVING NATURES: Mobility and the Environment in Canadian History Edited by Ben Bradley, Jay Young, and Colin M. Coates ISBN 978-1-55238-860-0 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org 10 What Was Driving Golf? Mobility, Nature, and the Making of Canadian Leisure Landscapes, 1870–1930 Elizabeth L. Jewett According to golf lore, when David Mulligan arrived at the Country Club of Montreal in St. Lambert, Quebec, agitated after a difficult trip over badly kept roads and a windswept rail bridge, he made a poor drive off the first tee. His golfing buddies offered him a do-over swing, giving birth to the term “mulligan.”1 Mulligan’s game had been affected by his unsettling journey, from an urban centre to a rural setting, in an open-top automobile—still a relatively exclusive form of transportation in the early 1920s. His experience shows how mobility was a problem- atic but essential component of this particular elite leisure activity. For golfers, strolling though and consuming a natural, albeit highly mani- cured and even manufactured landscape was at the core of the playing experience. Golfers walked extensive distances on the course, and as their pastime became increasingly popular they also travelled farther and farther from home to participate in it. 251 This chapter investigates what the lenses of mobility and environmental history reveal about golf course development in the period between 1873 and 1930. Divided into three sections, it takes a nationwide perspective but focuses on examples from Toronto and the national parks in the Canadian Rockies. The first section examines how golf courses were designed with players’ views of nature in mind. It high- lights the key aesthetic and playing principles circulating among golf course designers during the game’s “golden era”—from 1910 to 19452— and illustrates how golf course designs steered players along certain pathways, generating shared landscape experiences infused with im- plicit meanings about nature, leisure, and cultural identity. The second section examines the relationship between golf courses and modern transportation systems in the borderlands that separat- ed Canadian cities from the surrounding countryside during a period of rapid urbanization and outward sprawl. It focuses on the tension between two desires expressed by golfers while playing a course: easy access to their playing fields (by trolley, train, and automobile) and a sense of removal or distance from the bustle and pollution of city life (including those same transportation systems). The story of the Toronto Golf Club’s multiple relocations between 1873 and 1912 illustrates how the relationship between golf course landscapes and different modes of transportation played out in these borderland environments. The third section deals with the incorporation of long-distance pleasure travel and golf into the pantheon of tourist activities available at major Canadian resorts. Transcontinental railways allowed (and en- couraged) tourists to travel to new destinations in search of new experiences, and visiting the national parks in the Canadian Rockies was one of the most popular activities for well-heeled tourists around the turn of the last century. The rapid growth of tourism and increased competition led resort owners and park managers to develop an array of new amenities, including golf courses. Resorts across the country, and especially at Banff and Jasper, promoted golf as offering special playing experiences, in which traditional golf course characteristics complemented spectacular “natural” scenery. 252 Elizabeth L. Jewett The Nature of Canada’s Earliest Golf Courses For almost five centuries before golf arrived in North America, the game’s core social, cultural, and environmental attributes were devel- oping in the United Kingdom, where the majority of golf was played, and especially in Scotland. The traditional coastal links courses situ- ated on sandy, treeless, undulating grazing lands remained dominant in golf culture for generations, but during the second half of the nineteenth century, golf’s growing popularity led to a number of courses being developed at inland and suburban locations. Railways and im- proved roads made these golf courses readily accessible to wealthy, sta- tus-seeking city dwellers with the financial freedom needed to pursue such refined outdoor leisure activities.3 It was during this period of transformation in the United Kingdom that golf crossed the Atlantic. The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw golf courses developed across North America. Established in 1873, the Royal Montreal Golf Club was the first organized golf club on the continent.4 In Canada it was followed by courses in Quebec City (1874), Toronto (1876), Niagara-on-the-Lake (1881), Brantford (1881), Kingston (1886), Victoria (1889), Ottawa (1891), Halifax (1895), St. Andrews, NB (1895), Vancouver (1892), Winnipeg (1894), Regina (1896), Edmonton (1896), Saint John (1897), and Fredericton (1897). The earliest American courses were established during the same period, including those in Foxbury, PA (1887), St. Andrew’s, NY (1888), Shinnecock Hills, NY (1891), Brookline, MA (1893), Newport, RI (1893), and Chicago (1894). By the turn of the century, golf courses could be found from coast to coast.5 The game was initially carried from the United Kingdom in the luggage of wealthy Scottish merchants either visiting or settling in Canada; most of the earliest golf clubs had Scotsmen as founders, fi- nanciers, professionals, and members. During the nineteenth century, golf in Canada was exclusively an activity for upper- and upper-mid- dle-class men of Scottish or Anglo-Saxon descent. Women from simi- lar backgrounds made modest inroads starting in the late 1890s, when many golf clubs established separate ladies’ leagues and membership. However, it was not until the interwar years that participation in golf 10: What Was Driving Golf? 253 began to include significant numbers of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds. Thus, during the period from 1870 to 1930, the game of golf was part of a shared experience that reinforced behaviours recognizable and important to an affluent and privileged segment of Canadian society—precisely the kind of people who could pour sub- stantial time and money into leisure, recreation, and pleasure travel. Golf periodicals and the writings of important golf course archi- tects show that two crucial principles influenced the design and playing experience of Canada’s private and resort golf courses between 1900 and 1940. The first was that the course had to look natural and be aes- thetically pleasing to players as they moved through the landscape, advancing from hole to hole.

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