Swinging old-style hickory clubs, golfers will celebrate Quebec City's 400th birthday this summer by reclaiming the Plains of Abraham, the clifftop site of Canada's most famous battlefield - but also the birthplace of Canadian golf.
On the same ground where British troops led by General James Wolfe ended France's dream of a North American empire in 1759, a young Scottish sailor, William Doleman, became the first golfer on this side of the Atlantic (at least the first historians can name) when he came ashore in 1854 to practise his swing.
Covering 108 hectares of grassy knolls, monuments and gardens overlooking the St. Lawrence River, the Plains of Abraham is also the former home of the Royal Quebec Golf Club, founded in 1874 and the second-oldest on the continent. Golfers at what was considered one of the world's most picturesque and unique courses enjoyed sweeping views of the Laurentian Mountains, the Citadel and, far below, the busy harbour. Hazards included old fort foundations, precipices, bogs and moats.
During the week-long run of Golf Tradition: Quebec 2008 (Aug. 26 to Sept. 2), a course replicating nine of the Royal Quebec's original holes will host individual players as well as teams of golf history enthusiasts, including representatives from the Golf Historical Society of Canada.
"Quebec City's 400th birthday is the perfect opportunity to showcase the birthplace of golf in Canada and to promote golf throughout the region," says Richard Laflamme, the event's principal organizer. "There are some really beautiful courses, many of them unknown to most Canadians. Hopefully, visitors will try them out when they come for the party."
A celebration of the lives of individuals who have made a lasting impact on Quebec City - including passers-through like Doleman, who later became one of Scotland's greatest amateur golfers - is a central theme of the year-long, $90-million birthday bash that reaches a high point with a citywide party tomorrow, 400 years to the day that Samuel de Champlain came ashore to establish North America's first permanent French settlement.
Every night until July 29 at Espace 400e, the main festive area on Louise Basin near the Old Port public market, the world's biggest-ever multimedia show will project images recalling Quebec City's history on the side of the huge Bunge grain elevators across the bay. Called the Image Mill, the show illustrates how the city has always been a meeting place between the New and Old Worlds, and, especially, between the customs and pastimes of France and Great Britain.
Some historians believe that Scotsmen serving with British garrison troops played golf on the Plains of Abraham as early as the 1760s, although no definitive evidence has been found. But certainly it was bankers, merchants and other newcomers from Scotland and England who popularized the game locally in the late 19th century, when the British Empire was at its height and Quebec City boasted a sizable English-speaking population.
Today, there are more than two dozen public courses in the area - including a handful that rank among the province's best - scattered throughout a stunningly diverse landscape that includes Canadian Shield outcroppings, pristine lakes, verdant Laurentian valleys, towering evergreen forests and, of course, the mighty St. Lawrence.
Perhaps no golf course better displays this diversity of terrain than La Tempête Golf Club, a Darrell Huxham-designed beauty near the south shore town of Sainte-Hélène-de-Breakeyville, which offers a compelling mix of links-style and parkland holes. Launched in 2005 to rave reviews, the 7,096-yard layout is the sister property of the Château Bonne Entente, an upscale 55-year-old hotel in the city's western suburbs (about a 15-minute drive from the golf course) that recently underwent a $20-million makeover.
About 40 kilometres northeast of the city, at the base of the popular Mont-Sainte-Anne ski hill, is Le Grand Vallon, surely one of Eastern Canada's most scenic courses. Designed by Howard Watson, who started his career in the 1920s as an apprentice to the great Stanley Thompson, the rolling, tree-lined fairways twist around the base of the looming mountain and skirt the shorelines of four small lakes, offering golfers stunning views at every turn.
