Stanley Thompson’s famous Cleopatra, the 9th hole at Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course.
(Last updated November 2023.)
A friend recently asked me an intriguing question: If I had ample funds to settle anywhere, where in the world would I choose to live?
Canada, I answered without a moment’s hesitation. Ours is a rich and spectacularly beautiful country which, not least of all, is ripe with wonderful golf courses. Admittedly, I’d spend my winters golfing in tropical climes, but every spring I’d return, sticks in hand, to play the nation’s top tracks.
I’d start at Newfoundland’s Humber Valley, a brilliant Doug Carrick-designed layout, and slowly make my way west, with stops along the way in Cape Breton, Quebec’s Laurentians, Ontario’s Muskoka Lakes district and at the prairie courses in and around Saskatoon.
Over the years, I’ve grown especially fond of the mountain layouts of Alberta and British Columbia: Stewart Creek, Greywolf, Salmon Arm, Fairmont Chateau Whistler, Tobiano and several more.
But the truest, most enduring loves of my golfing life are the Stanley Thompson-designed jewels found in Jasper and Banff. Each comes so close to heavenly perfection that even now, after playing them so many times, I can’t choose a favourite.
Picture perfect: elk grazing at Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course. (Images: Fairmont Hotels)
At Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course, Thompson cleared gaps through the forest of fir and spruce to point the golfer toward greens aligned with distant mountains, then whimsically patterned his bunkers after the snow formations on their peaks. In choosing a circular course path that flowed with the natural contours of the land, Thompson made the most of lovely Lac Beauvert by setting three holes against its shores.
Thompson’s genius — and mischievous personality — was best seen at Jasper’s ninth hole, Cleopatra, one of Canada’s signature par-threes. The 231-yard hole plays downhill to a steep-sided and heavily bunkered green framed by the backdrop of distant Pyramid Mountain. Inspired by the mountain’s name, Thompson painstakingly moulded the ninth’s greenside bunkers into the voluptuous form of the ancient Egyptian queen. Unamused by Thompson’s gag, hotel officials ordered the architect to go back and mask Cleopatra’s charms.
My passion for Thompson’s other Alberta masterwork, Fairmont Banff Springs Golf Course, is described in detail in our feature story, Banff Springs: Monarch of Mountain Golf. Both the course and the hotel that looms like a fairy-tale fortress on the cliffs overhead have come to symbolize Canada as surely as the beaver, Brooke Henderson and Niagara Falls.
Why would I want to live anywhere else?
