There was no time to linger. I had much of Canada to see and only two weeks in which to do it. My next stop was the world’s largest log cabin, Chateau Montebello; the first log of its construction was laid in 1930. From its imposing entrance hall with its giant central open fireplace spread wings that house the rooms, public and private. Many a famous head has slept under its roof, from heads of state to royalty and film stars. Set in the heart of a hundred square mile estate on the shore of the Ottawa River, between Montreal and Ottawa, its nearby eighteen-hole well-matured golf course was pleasing to the eye in June. In autumn the colours of its trees are as brilliant in colour as nature can produce. Red, gold and shades of rust blend with evergreens adding another dimension to the course. It’s a good track and makes for testing and pleasurable golf. I was amazed when I was shown the damage a beaver can do. I’m not talking about one or two trees. The dam animals could fell a forest if they put their minds to it. I no longer complain about the few persistent woodworms I have at home.

I have a list of my favourite places in the world and high on it now appears Ottawa, capital of Canada. What a delightful and majestic city it is. Clean, conservative and modern, culture and good taste oozes out of its every pore. Its houses of parliament, that are so terribly English, look across the Ottawa River next to the lock that joins it to the St Laurence River. Although it was to be my briefest stopover, I was fortunate to be staying at Ottawa’s most majestic hotel, Chateau Laurier, which as the brochure so rightly says is “a symbol of timeless elegance”. I even found that Canada’s and possibly the world’s most famous portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh still lived in his apartment on the hotel’s sixth floor. Years gone by he was my inspiration, when I had my first photographic studio. In today’s world the portrait photographer seems a dying breed now that video cameras are with us. Time, or rather lack of it, made it impossible to visit museums, whether they are Indian National or Science and Technology, but I love markets and food shops and restaurants. The farmers market in Ottawa sounded just up my street and there was just enough time to fit it in. I was able to wander through stalls displaying every farming product imaginable, including brilliant arrays of flowers. Delicatessens with foods and spices from all over the world line the streets with restaurants wafting out tempting aromas. I had been directed to a bookshop, for I collect cookery books wherever my travels take me. I found a gem and different from anything else in my library, for it combined Ottawa’s history with food and recipes of bygone years. Reluctantly I left this unusually clean market and wandered through some of the city’s modern shopping malls ending up at the Elephant and Castle Pub, two floors of Tudor comfort and a good selection of pub-grub.

The city is surrounded by many good courses within easy reach of its centre, but unfortunately I was to leave as ahead of me lay a seven-hour drive to my next stop Deerhurst Resort. Before I set off I could not resist the urge to take a photograph of Chateau Laurier. While lining up my picture a kiosk owner came out and made a point of asking me whether a display sign he had on the pavement was in my way, which he kindly removed. It was one of the many small gestures I came across throughout my travels that convinced me that Canadians are very nice people.

The Algonquin National Park through which I had to pass soon took my attention as I travelled through the towns of Eganville, Barry’s Bay, Whitney, Ostongue Lake and into Huntsville, from where I headed to Deerhurst.

Deerhurst Resort has two good courses, the Lakeside built in 1966 and its sister course the highly rated Highland Golf Course, designed by Robert Cupp and Thomas McBroom, first opened in 1990. The Highland Course, cut through wooded rolling wilderness, is a magnificent eighteen-hole championship track The Lakeside, a shorter par 65, skirts Lake Peninsula which also provides an abundance of fun with water sports and fishing. Deerhurst, celebrating its centenary, owes its early beginning to an Englishman, Charles Waterhouse. It is around his family that its development owes its success. It makes a delightful story well captured in a book on Deerhurst Resort’s history, well researched and written by Laura Kennedy, who works there with her husband Paul, the golf professional at Deerhurst Highlands.

The area in which Deerhurst lies is known as Muskoka. Like everywhere I went in Canada it was fashioned for those who love the big outdoors. The natural wonders of Muskoka can be explored in a Nissan Pathfinder, or the more old-fashioned way of saddling up for a guided ride through the many trails of the area. After all that you may well need the services of the Resort’s Spa, which has everything from aromatherapy steam bath to full body Swedish massage. The winter months can be just as energetic with downhill cross country skiing, ice-skating, snow mobiling, dog sledding and sleigh rides, and a big log fire at the end of it all. Food and entertainment couldn’t be faulted and there’s a good stage show provided throughout the year. The golf courses themselves, like most in Canada, wore green in the summer as a backdrop, changing to autumn’s brilliant colours. I have fond memories of Deerhurst and not just because I birdied the par three eighth on the Highland Course. The whole place has a really warm family feeling about it. 

It was a four-hour trip to Toronto Airport where I checked in on the Air Canada flight for Calgary. Like everyone else I had heard of the Calgary stampede and that was about it.

Out of Calgary Airport I picked up Route 1, the Trans Canada Highway, on which I was to stay more or less for the rest of the trip. Heading West towards Canmore I was looking for Kananaskis Village. Which took just over an hour to reach in comparison with just over a week to pronounce correctly. I had an overnight stay at the Best Western Kananaskis Inn, down the road from two spectacular eighteen-hole golf courses designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. As I play off a rusty twelve handicap, I found it a little daunting when I was paired up with a guy off two and his brother and father, who weren’t much higher. Actually it had a more steadying effect on my game and I enjoyed the course. The mountains that surround the valley dominate the whole scene, impressive and snow-capped. There was no doubt I was now in the Rockies.

Unfortunately the weather clamped down on the fifteenth hole and the temperature dropped like a rock. Of course the locals knew this could happen and were prepared for it. I shivered in shorts. I returned a couple of days later to be shown around the second course in warm sunny weather. John, a retired accountant and one of the marshals told me a typical Canadian story that while he was travelling down a par five fairway towards the tee, he could see a group were just about to play, so he pulled into the left and waited. It was then that one of the players started to shout and wave at him and soon the others joined in. He couldn’t understand why they were so agitated, until he looked over his shoulder and there standing behind him was a big bear. There’s not many can get wheel spin out of a golf cart, but John managed it that day. While I was relaxing in the clubhouse and admiring the view I had an attack of deja vu. I knew I had been here before. Then it struck me, the German edition of the Travelling Golfer’s Guide, which is distributed by Birdie Golf, has their advertisement on the back page, which contains a photograph of the exact view I was looking at. It took me some time to figure that one out.

If like me you enjoy driving Canada is a great place for it. Taking a car through the Rockies is an experience never to be forgotten. I was on my way to Jasper and travelling through the Banff National Park, which will cost you $10 and the best $10 value you will find anywhere. You take a right off the highway onto Route 93 that leads to Jasper, four and half-hours of blissful scenery. Evening saw me wandering in town peering in the gift shops and summing up the restaurants. It’s a nice place, small and cosy. I settled for a Chinese meal that evening and tested out a few bars. There is a moan I have about Canada and that is the pricing system in its restaurants. The price you see on the menu is always lower than the bill. National and local taxes get added and although it may be something Canadians are used to, most other visitors are not and you are forever thinking how reasonable the prices are until the bill arrives. Only once did I find a restaurant that included all the taxes in the price they quoted for the food. It came as a pleasant surprise and added to the enjoyment of that particular restaurant.

Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course was designed in 1925 by the Canadian architect Stanley Thompson and each hole is in line with a distant mountain peak and has awards coming out of its ears. It is open from late April until the end of October, which I feel, is pushing it a little from the weather I had already experienced. It lies in a beautiful basin by a lake deep in the Rockies and has a lovely feeling of permanence about it. It is a truly beautiful spot. The resort has every amenity for winter and summer holidays and I would be repeating myself time and again if I listed them. The tee of the fourteenth also doubles up as an altar. For it is a very popular spot on which locals get married or have wedding photographs taken. Unfortunately I had just missed a wedding that had happened the day before, when the bride and groom arrived in separate dug-out bark canoes, tied the knot and left in one canoe which metaphorically they will be paddling for the rest of their lives together. Another local member of the club was so attached to the course he even had his ashes sprinkled over his favourite hole when he died. A memorable place.

Tourism in general across Canada owes much to the foresight of William Cornelius Van Horne when he became general manager of Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881. It was his drive, foresight and enthusiasm that made it possible to build the railroad across Canada through its untamed wilderness. The Banff Springs Hotel is a twenty-seven-hole golf resort and one of the most famous in the world. Van Horne saw the potential of the tourist market and said, “Since we can’t export the scenery, we’ll have to import the tourist.” which has more or less become the maxim of most resorts in Canada. At Banff, the hot springs of the area make an attractive focal point and he chose the confluence of the Bow and Spray rivers for the location of the hotel. One of the most important figures in Canadian architectural history, Bruce Price was called in and designed what is commonly known as the “Castle in the Rockies”, but is in effect fashioned on the lines of a mediaeval French chateau.

That was in 1886. Many millions of dollars have been spent on it since then, enlarging and refurbishing. Paramount has been attention to detail and it is an experience in itself to wander the hotel’s corridors and public rooms to appreciate the meticulous attention to detail that is a hallmark of Banff Springs Hotel. In 1928 Stanley Thompson, one of the great resort course designers, replaced the hotel’s original nine hole golf course designed by Donald Ross with an eighteen hole par 71 – a masterpiece and the first one million dollar course to be constructed. In 1989 a further nine were added, but it’s on Thompson’s course that the most memorable hole can be found. The par three fourth aptly known as “the devil’s cauldron”, one of the most photographed par threes in the world. From a highly elevated tee across a glacial lake to a well-guarded green the hole is surrounded by high pine with a forbidding rock-face of a mountain towering three thousand feet above it. Although I choked down on a seven I overshot the green, but a forgiving bank rolled the ball back and I sunk the putt. Maybe not a birdie to brag about, but I do.

During my visit one of the Thompson’s nine was up and was being replaced with the exact replica of Ross’s original nine. I was told the work was being carried out by one of Canada’s leading golf course designers Les Furber, a name I hadn’t heard for twenty-five years when we struck up a friendship while he was helping Robert Trent Jones Sr. To construct the Mijas Golf course on the outskirts of my hometown on the Costa del Sol in Spain. I had wondered what had become of him. It was nice to hear of his success and a telephone call brought him to the clubhouse where we caught up on the past two and a half decades over a few beers. He was just finishing a beautiful layout nearby called Silver Tip, which is a description of a breed of bear, referring to its coat. Although not quite ready for play, I was shown over the course, most impressive and will surely rank among the great courses of Canada.

The next long haul of my trip was to be a flight from Calgary to Vancouver. But someone had told me the journey could be done in about fourteen hours by road and the beauty of the Rockies was such that should I never pass this way again I would be wasting my time in the air. I cancelled my flight, booked an early call for 5 am at which time I set off for Vancouver. It was the right choice. The drive through the Rockies was awe inspiring as I passed frozen lakes, slowly moving glaciers, avalanche areas that cleaned tracks down through the mountains like a Hoover, leaving thousands of pine trees stripped to the trunk and spread down the mountains and into the lakes haphazard as in a giant’s game of spinnikins. Wherever there was a possibility of an avalanche sweeping across the highway, and there were many, tunnels had been built as a protection. Huge lakes were everywhere, the result of the annual run-off from the melting snow-covered mountains. Large timber yards stored their raw material of logs in the lakes and salesrooms for log cabins dotted the route.

I reached Vancouver on time; a major road led me off to the BC99 North, onto the Express Way towards Horseshoe Bay Squamish and onto Whistler, where I was staying. Whistler is 120 kilometres north of Vancouver and a resort area, not an individual resort. It is relatively new in the tourist world, but already has a wide selection of accommodation from five star hotels to bed and breakfast establishments. Once again this is the big outdoors offering something for everyone. There is an excellent selection of world class golf courses, the Whistler Golf Club course is the first Canadian course designed by Arnold Palmer and features nine lakes, two winding creeks and rolling greens. I was staying at Chateau Whistler, an imposing hotel which has its own mountainous course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., possibly awesome to look at for a high handicapper as it traverses mountain ledges and crosses rushing streams. Nature has dictated its course. But even the high handicapper will find it enjoyable. Golfers can also enjoy the computer aided satellite yardage system on board all golf carts. A few minutes up the road is the Nicklaus North Golf Course. Although challenging for all handicappers its flat layout gives a more restful round. The course winds alongside the glacier fed Green Lake and is the newest course in the area.

The choice of restaurants and shops is limitless and its all-round season provides a sport or interest to satisfy all tastes. A few high cranes in the background testify to Whistlers growing popularity, as expansion tries to satisfy demand. Unfortunately my limited stay permitted play on only a few holes of the Chateau Whistler course. In that time, to prove what a small world the travelling golfing world is, I met up with a group of Chinese golfers I had met many years ago from Singapore, where I had been lecturing. But time was up and I packed for the last time in Canada before heading for Vancouver Airport thinking how I would like to see it all again in Autumn.

End