Award-winning journalist and golf historian Arv Olson served for 38 years as a sportswriter at the Vancouver Sun newspaper, where he was known as the “voice of golf.” He is the author of three books on golf history in Canada, including Backspin: 120 Years of Golf in British Columbia; Golflore: Notes, Quotes and Anecdotes; and Stan Leonard: Canada’s Forgotten Golf Legend. Olson was the recipient in 2012 of the Northwest Golf Media Association’s Distinguished Service Award. He lives in Fanny Bay.
Considered the “bible of B.C. golf-related history,” Backspin is an encyclopedic reference on the growth of B.C.’s golf game, legendary golf figures past and present, and the golf courses of B.C.
Colwood: The Royal Course
The world was preoccupied with a war when Colwood quietly opened in November 1914 as the eighth active course in B.C. The regal prefix was applied 17 years later by permission of George V, and today Colwood is one of only six Canadian courses to have earned the “Royal” designation from a reigning monarch.
The king’s son, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, had played the course several times and consented to become a patron of the club. While here, the prince was a guest at Hatley Castle, now Royal Roads University, on the immense estate of James Dunsmuir, the retired former premier and later eighth lieutenant-governor of the province.
Dunsmuir and lumber baron Joseph Austin Sayward collaborated to develop a course on 240 acres of the original Esquimalt Farm managed by Capt. Edward E. Langford. The 73rd Regiment captain had named his house, opposite the 17th green, Colwood after the family estate in England.
Dunsmuir and Sayward paid $183,722 for the land, on which a steeplechase course existed at the turn of the century. Sayward, a gruff man by nature, hired A.V. Macan to create the course.
St. Andrews inspired the irascible Irishman’s work, though the Langford site wasn’t a seaside locale on which he could shape a tribute course to the Scottish links. However, the idyllic setting afforded him the necessities for a course: gentle sloping terrain, towering evergreens and gnarled oaks.
Royal Colwood rates as one of his finest creations, and is arguably his best in B.C. Macan was especially proud of the 11th, 12th and 13th holes, frequently referring to them as his “masterpieces.” Macan’s trademarks are demanding par-four holes that require two well-played shots and undulating, crowned greens “to defy backspin players.”
An explosion in golf interest coupled with predictions that Victoria’s population would exceed 100,000 prompted Dunsmuir and Sayward to develop a course directly across the road to Sooke from Dunsmuir’s stately estate. They feared the Victoria Club’s tax assessments would become prohibitive with increased housing in the Oak Bay area and that members would be forced to vacate the links.
On Nov. 20, 1913, the Colwood Land Co. was registered, with Biggerstaff Wilson, Thomas W. Paterson, Frederick B. Pemberton, C.E. Todd and Francis M. Rattenbury holding one share each. The course opened for play almost a year to the day later, but with war spreading like wildfire throughout Europe, hardly anyone noticed.
Despite this, unlike some courses that deteriorated through neglect during the war, Colwood thrived in its early years. It certainly never lacked moisture. When Sayward sold the Esquimalt Water Works, he inserted a clause in the transaction that guaranteed the club unlimited water for 30 years at a fixed annual rate of $400.
The club prospered following the war and by 1922 a new luxurious clubhouse stood on the rock bluff behind the ninth green. But the building, valued at $50,000 and insured for $30,000, burned to the ground in February 1929. Everything in the clubhouse — records, trophies and clubs — was destroyed in the spectacular blaze that attracted spectators from as far away as the city.
The replacement clubhouse was a $75,000 Elizabethan-style structure with an exterior of California stucco supplemented by half-timber work and weather-boarded gables.
With its reputation as a championship course, Royal Colwood was the choice location for many leading tournaments. The prestigious Pacific Northwest Golf Association’s event came to Colwood in 1922 and 1927, as did the B.C. Amateur championships of 1925, 1929 and 1935, the 1934 B.C. Open and the 1935 Canadian Ladies’ Closed.
Colwood hasn’t been without fine players, including Byrnie Schwengers, Ted Colgate, Bill McColl, Vic Painter and Dave Mick. Schwengers was more noted for his tennis prowess, while Painter won his first of five club titles in 1947 and his last 32 years later.
Pat Derry was unbeatable as women’s club champion for 10 straight years through 1986. Yet the course that prides itself in developing shot-makers hasn’t turned out a B.C. amateur champion since 1962, when Lawrie Kerr stopped teenager Dick Munn at Uplands. It was Kerr’s most memorable golfing day since being chosen to caddy for a U.S. Army recruit named Joe Louis, known as the Brown Bomber, who came to Victoria for a 1945 exhibition bout at the Bay Street Armories. Louis played only nine holes and paid Kerr $20 US, almost 50 times the going nine-hole rate.
One of Canada’s great female golfers, Marlene Stewart Streit of Ontario, graced Colwood’s fairways in 1955. She trounced Mary Gay, also of Ontario, 11-9 in the 36-hole Open final and finished 15 strokes ahead of runner-up Gay in the Closed. Streit’s 71 on the third day for 223 remains the best women’s score at Colwood.
Rounds under 70 weren’t commonplace over the years, although Stan Leonard, Bob Fleming and Doug Roxburgh are among the superlative shot-makers who also have captured B.C. Amateur titles at Colwood.
The Canadian Amateur has been held at Colwood twice, with battlers named Stuart Jones and Jim Nelford the triumphant survivors. Jones, a former rugby scrum half, took the measure of compatriot Ross Murray in an all-New Zealand final the week after the 1967 Commonwealth Team matches at Oak Bay.
Nelford, the Fraserview-reared future pro, repeated as national amateur champion in 1976 by beating Mexican Rafael Alarcón on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff. They had tied at 287.
Bill Court cheered on Jim Nelford as a spectator at the 1976 final, having retired the year before when the club promoted assistant Bob Hogarth as head pro. Hogarth had also apprenticed under both Court and former Victorian Pat Fletcher at Royal Montreal.
Regrettably, Colwood’s picturesque clubhouse- hospital-nunnery was demolished in 1987. A spacious new clubhouse opened in 1993, two years before the club hosted the RCGA Canadian Seniors Championships in an event where Bob Wylie of Calgary set a record by claiming his seventh and last John Rankin Memorial Trophy to set a Canadian record that still stands.
While a heritage landmark is lost forever, Macan’s Royal Colwood course is a lasting legacy for golfers in British Columbia.
Excerpted from Backspin: 120 Years of Golf in British Columbia. Victoria, B.C.: Heritage House Publishing (978-1-927051-41-2, $28.95) © 2012 Arv Olson
