Susanna McLeod
Special to Ontario Construction News
The profession of architect has wide-ranging options, from residential, commercial, industrial, and landscaping. Landscape planning has a sub-specialty that only a few professionals take up: golf course architecture. In the early 1900s, Stanley Thompson was an influential golf course architect, with courses in Canada and beyond.
Stanley W. Thompson was born into a golfing family in Toronto, Ontario on September 17, 1893. The male Thompson children (of five brothers and four sisters) presented a team of golfers, “known in North America as the Amazing Thompsons for their collective golf abilities,” said the Stanley Thompson Society. Older brothers Nicol and Mathew became professional golfers while the others remained amateurs. “From 1921 to 1924 they dominated Canadian golf.”
Starting as caddies at The Toronto Golf Club, the Thompson brothers learned the game from the club’s head pro, George Cumming. The Toronto Club was “where the boys designed and built their first gold course, six holes, known as Rye Field,” mentioned STS. Stanley Thompson attended Ontario Agricultural College, and studied golf course architecture. World War One interrupted the young man’s career plans.
Enlisting for duty with the C.E.F. close to the start of the Great War, Thompson “was a signaler in the 4th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, Canadian Expeditionary Force,” said Ian Andrew and Jim Barclay at Golf Club Atlas, November 11, 2012. Thompson was devoted to his service, “mentioned in a written dispatch on April 9, 1917 for his gallant and distinguished services in the field.” He was promoted to Lieutenant in May 1918, and at the end of duty, returned home to join the family business in 1920.
Thompson’s first golf course architecture project was completed at Muskoka Lakes Golf and Country Club, earning praise and appreciation. On the death of their father, Thompson’s brothers Nicol and George left the architecture business, returning to their professional golf jobs. Having innate genius in golf course architecture, Stanley Thompson established his own firm in 1922, named Stanley Thompson & Co. Limited. The firm was another step toward what became a brilliant international career in the Golden Age of golf course architecture.
Thriving in course design, by the 1930s, Thompson had secured a stellar reputation with golf venues in Banff Springs, Jasper Park Lodge, plus a number of courses throughout southern Ontario, including St. George’s Golf and Country Club at Toronto, and Chedoke Golf Club at Hamilton. His brother Nicol assisted on the architecture of “several courses in and around the Niagara Peninsula,” according to Golf Canada. Debates are ongoing, as to which courses were specifically Thompson’s, or staff designs.
Understanding the game of golf inside and out, Thompson “combined traditional Scottish elements with innovative plans that required a more strategic game, all the while preserving and exploiting the natural terrain and creating beautiful vistas,” stated Parks Canada’s “Stanley W. Thompson National Historic Person” plaque at Ingonish Beach, Nova Scotia. The province’s Highlands Links golf course designed in 1939 is considered one of Thompson’s masterpieces, and “is a testimony to his ingenuity and artistic vision.”
Thompson was quoted as saying that the course designer should “strive to retain as much of the natural ground formation as possible,” wrote Kirsten L. Brown in her thesis, “Developing Guidelines for Conserving the Works of Stanley Thompson,” August 2010. Thompson believed that “the most successful course is one that will test the skill of the most advanced player, without discouraging the duffer.”
Golf course contracts slowed over the next two decades, but the architectural firm remained the leader in design with full service. “Billed as landscape architects and engineers,” Thompson’s company “employed experts in plant pathology, agronomy, soil chemistry, a tree surgeon and a town planner,” said Stanley Thompson Society.
The architecture professional hired graduates from architecture school. The avid young men received on-the-job training in business and innovative planning from Thompson. Several followed him into confident golf course architecture; among several designers, Robbie Robinson (1907-1989) and Howard Watson (1907-1992) laid out premier golf courses around the world. Robert Trent Jones (1906-2000) must have impressed his employer. In 1932, Thompson made Jones a partner in his operation.
Over his career, Stanley Thompson designed hundreds of golf courses across Canada and in Ohio, New York and Florida in the United States. Among the wide number in Ontario, Thompson’s courses include Saugeen Golf Club (1925), Kenora Golf Club (1921), and Bigwin Inn Golf Course (1921).
Preparing for a course planning trip to South America, Stanley Thompson suffered a brain aneurysm while enjoying lunch at Royal York Hotel. The revered course designer died on January 3, 1953 at age 59. Thompson was survived by his second wife, Helen, and his adopted son, Norm, from her first marriage. Many Thompson-designed golf courses remain as a brilliant legacy of innovation combined with nature, his influence providing a foundation for today’s golf course architects.
Susanna McLeod is a Kingston-based writer specializing in Canadian history.
