The Origins of Golf
Although the game of golf as we know it today developed in Scotland, the origins are lost in antiquity. Paintings by Dutch artists as far back as 1296 show players hitting balls towards pegs driven into the ice on frozen bodies of water. A similar game was played on land. Dutch and Scottish fishermen traded extensively and some historians speculate that golf was introduced to Scotland in this manner.
The oldest golf club in the world, the Royal Blackheath Golf Club of London, England was established in the 17th century. It is said that Mary, Queen of Scots, supposedly the first woman player, played there. The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers drew up the earliest know Rules of Golf prior to 1750. In 1754 St. Andrews Golf Club was founded in Scotland. King William IV became its patron in 1834 and changed the name to The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. Eventually, it became the governing body of golf in the British Isles and the Commonwealth.
It is believed the tradition of the Red Jackets began at St. Andrews. Before the establishment of golf “courses” the game was played in public parks and golfers wore red jackets as a warning to strollers to watch out for flying golf balls. This tradition was carried on in Montreal when the Montreal Golf Club, later the Royal Montreal, first played in Fletcher’s Field in 1873 shortly after the city had designated Mount Royal as a public park.
The first to play golf in Canada may have been the young Scottish factors who arrived as fur traders for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1670s. It is a certainty that many Scots were drawn to the city of Montreal, a crossroads of Communications and Industry. By 1783 some of them formed the Northwest Company as a rival to the Hudson’s Bay Company. These Scotsmen carried their old traditions to a new world and two of the most important were golf and curling. There is also evidence that in the 1800s Scottish Regiments of the British Army brought their golf and curling stones to Canada. Golf was known in South Carolina and Georgia soon after the American Revolution but there is no solid evidence that the game was ever played there.
In the 1868, the Dunn family of Quebec City built a three-hole course on their private summer property on Ile d’Orleans. It still exists today (at the posting of this article in 2017) as a nine-hole course.
The oldest club in North America is the Royal Montreal Golf Club established November 4, 1873. It was followed by the Royal Quebec Golf Club in 1874 and the Toronto Golf Club in 1876.
The Quebec Golf Association was formed in 1920. Its mandate was to be of service to all the golf clubs in the province by improving the management and development of golf at all levels.
Summerlea followed shortly after, incorporating in 1922.
Marion Dunn