{"id":2500,"date":"2018-02-06T23:04:14","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T23:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bcgolfhouse.com\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2018-02-06T23:04:14","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T23:04:14","slug":"a-look-back-at-1993-100th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/a-look-back-at-1993-100th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back at 1993-100th Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tA Look Back at 1993 <\/strong><\/p>\n

The 100th<\/sup> Anniversary For Golf in BC<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the summer of 1993, Chateau Whistler golf course and hotel opened.\u00a0 For the complex\u2019s first function, the hotel hosted the British Columbia Golf Association\u2019s (BCGA) 100th<\/sup> anniversary gala dinner. Don Gardner, the Executive Director of the BCGA, planned the event. \u00a0Peter Bentley, the CEO of the \u00a0Canadian Forest Products Company CANFOR), sponsored the event.\u00a0 The attendees included the who\u2019s who of British Columbia golf: \u00a0past provincial, national, and international champions, British Columbia team members, prominent amateurs, and influential local professionals who played roles in the one- hundred year history of golf in the province. \u00a0Arv Olson, the Vancouver Sun sports reporter, launched his book \u201cBackspin\u201d. (A reflection on the first 100 years of golf in BC). \u00a0The BC Golf Museum, in partnership with the Vancouver Park Board and the BCGA, hosted a championship using hickory shafted golf clubs at the Stanley Park Pitch & Putt golf course \u2013 BC\u2019s first such facility. \u00a0The BC Golf Museum also produced an exhibition utilizing the research on the earliest golf courses that we knew in 1993.\u00a0 The exhibition \u00a0focused on clubs formed prior to 1913 commencing with the first organized golf club in the province, the Vancouver Country Club, located at Jerry\u2019s Cove. \u00a0In 1892, the Bell-Irvings enticed a group of Vancouver businessmen to form the Vancouver Country Club and build a course at Jerry\u2019s Cove, now Jericho Beach.\u00a0 The exhibist showed the history of The Victoria Golf Club, the oldest golf club in its original location in Canada. The list of pre-1913 courses at the conclusion of this article illustrates the state of the research in 1993.<\/p>\n

To locate the early courses, a researcher needed to find the original microfilm for the local newspaper for the area being researched.\u00a0 For example, to trace the roots for the Hedley Golf Club, formed in 1909, the investigation needed to be conducted at the local Princeton Museum and Archives. Starting with a clue, the researcher began by looking at microfilms for the \u201cHedley Gazette\u201d. After an exhaustive, tedious, boring, and neck Breaking exercise, the microfilm screen could reveal the desired result. A heading such as: \u201cThe Locals are Playing Golf\u201d, \u201cA Group of Citizens are Forming a Golf Club\u201d, \u201cGolf is Being Introduced\u201d, or \u201cThe Royal and Ancient Game Arrives\u201d appeared on the screen. \u00a0Clearly, the research took time. Sometimes important news clippings could be missed.<\/p>\n

Today, because of the power of the internet, researching family roots, company origins, golf course formations, or golf professional movements is dramatically different.\u00a0 Genealogy companies, such as: Genealogy Bank, Fold3, Ancestry.com, Family Search.org, NewspaperArchives are scanning the historical newspapers of the world. By purchasing a monthly or yearly subscription to these databases, the researcher can conduct a word search in many of the local historical newspapers for towns in Canada, US, and Britain. In British Columbia, some of the historical newspapers show town life for locations that no longer exist. \u00a0By entering the word \u201cgolf\u201d into a specific newspaper, a simple click of the mouse on the \u201csearch button\u201d instantly reveals every time the word \u201cgolf\u201d appears in the newspaper. To easily locate these references, the search highlights the word \u201cgolf\u201d in yellow.<\/p>\n

This method produces a more comprehensive search than the old microfilm search. Clearly, it was impossible to hope to find every golf reference by visually viewing each page of the newspaper on the microfilm screen as the researcher turned the wheel.<\/p>\n

This example illustrates how the research has become easier and more extensive. In 1993, the Museum believed golf had died in Vancouver at Moodyville in 1899. Utilizing the historical newspaper database produced by the University of BC library, a simple search reveals this was not the case. A search of the historical newspaper \u201cThe Express\u201d published in North Vancouver\u00a0 shows golf was played on the Lynn Creek golf course\u00a0 until 1907. The Moodyville Rifle Range did not force the closure of the golf course in 1899 as previously believed. The course simply moved closer to Burrard Inlet and the rifle range reopened near its original location in 1894, only a little further inland.<\/p>\n

A comparison of the 1993 list for pre-1913 golf courses with the 2017 list for pre 1913 courses shows a dramatic increase in the number of locations where local residents played golf. If the list is expanded to 1940, the number of golf courses that existed in BC shows golf was not a trivial game played by a few people as suspected in 1993.<\/p>\n

When viewing the popularity of golf in western Canada and the US, the number of golf courses indicate golf played a major role in the social development of the towns. Utilizing the internet, the BC Golf Museum now has found the initial roots for golf in the western Canadian provinces and the western US states.\u00a0 Because database companies are providing access to additional historical newspapers monthly, the earliest references to \u201cGolf in North America\u201d will be revealed within the next decade.<\/p>\n

The present challenge is to find the earliest golf references in North America. Definitely, the \u201cApple Tree Gang\u201d who constructed a golf course in 1888 in Yonkers, New York, were not the first to introduce golf to the US. Perhaps, \u201cThe Royal Montreal GC\u201d formed in 1873 in Montreal, Quebec was not the first golf club in North America as we now think.<\/p>\n

The answer to the earliest roots for golf in North America lies buried\u00a0 the local historical papers. The internet will produce the answer.<\/p>\n

Watch for a posting showing:<\/p>\n

Pre-1915 golf courses in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Utah<\/p>\n

Pre-1915 Golf Professionals working at these golf courses.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Look Back at 1993 The 100th Anniversary For Golf in BC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itbcpro.ca\/bcgolfhouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}