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Histories of Vancouver's Private Clubs

Jim Sutherland

| May 3, 2011

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Capilano Golf and Country Club

In 1930, during a spot of economic trouble expected to quickly recede, Vancouver entrepreneur A.J.T. Taylor paid the municipality of West Vancouver $20 an acre for 6,000 acres of land running from the Capilano River to Horseshoe Bay. By mid-decade, working with the Guinness family and other British investors, Taylor had hired Canadian great Stanley Thompson to design a golf course, which opened for play in 1938 to a membership of just 50 – West Vancouver was a mere village and the trip over from Vancouver took up the better part of a day, after all. A year later, however, the Lions Gate Bridge was completed, and Capilano Golf and Country Club quickly emerged as a mountainside gem with few West Coast rivals, one of the toughest clubs in the country to crack. Today it is ranked Canada's seventh best course (behind four other Thompson designs) in Score Golf magazine's biannual survey. Image: Leonard Frank/VPL; 1937

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Marine Drive Golf Club

If, in the annals of golf course design, the Torontonian Thompson has been unfairly overshadowed by American contemporaries such as Donald Ross and A.W. Tillinghast, it is equally true that Thompson had the same effect on Victoria resident Arthur Vernon Macan. Active from before the First World War right into the 1960s, Macan designed dozens of courses, from B.C. through northern California, but has only recently begun to attract appropriate notice. Marine Drive, which opened in 1922, was one of his early designs and remains one of his most acclaimed. Only 6,300 yards long, and crammed into barely a hundred riverside acres, it has produced a long list of champions and regularly confounds the field in provincial and national championships. Renowned for the proportion of low-handicappers among its members, Marine ranks 78th in Score Golf's Top 100. Image: Courtesy Marine Drive Golf Club, 1930

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Point Grey Golf and Country Club

Founded in large part by veterans returning from the First World War, Point Grey lies between Marine Drive and Shaughnessy. With two public courses also along the north arm of the Fraser, it's a golf course cluster rivalled almost nowhere else in the country. Among its distinctions is one that is both regrettable and unlikely to be ended this summer at Shaughnessy: It was here in 1954 that a Canadian last won the Canadian Open. Short-hitting but accurate Pat Fletcher, who was working as a club pro in Saskatoon, shot a 32 on the back nine for a Sunday afternoon, come-from-behind victory. Image: Gordon Sedawie/VPL, 1958

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Vancouver Golf Club

Shaughnessy's real estate headaches – forced to move once due to its location on leased land and facing the same prospect today – were anticipated by the founders of The Vancouver Golf Club. Prominent citizens and avid golfers who thought the booming city underserved, they opted instead to buy a hillside sheep pasture in distant Coquitlam for their course, the first nine holes of which opened in 1911. This year the club also celebrates its 100th season. Image: Stuart Thomson/VPL

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Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club

In July 1923, U.S. president Warren G. Harding must have considered himself a lucky man to be able to sneak away during the first official Canadian visit by an American head of state for an impromptu game of golf, especially to a lovely little course mere minutes from downtown Vancouver. Well, Harding was not so lucky, it turned out. Already ill with what his doctor believed to be food poisoning, he complained of nausea and abdominal pain, and was administered digitalis after the round. Seven days later, in San Francisco, he died. Shaughnessy, however, lives on, having relocated in 1960 from the present site of VanDusen Botanical Gardens to land leased from the Musqueam band on the banks of the north arm of the Fraser. One of the last designs by A.V. Macan, Shaughnessy is ranked the 13th best course in Canada by Score Golf. This July, during its 100th anniversary season, the club hosts the RBC Canadian Open for the fourth time. Image: Stuart Thomson/VPL | 1926