KAMLOOPS, B.C. -- Award-winning vineyards and superior golf - the irresistibly modern one-two tourism punch pioneered by California's Napa and Sonoma valleys - has in less than a decade put the once largely overlooked Thompson-Okanagan region of British Columbia on the radar of travellers.
Three high-profile golf courses are making their debut this season, a construction boom unmatched by any other Canadian destination. The first to launch, on July 6, was Tobiano, a gorgeous 7,328-yard Tom McBroom design set on bluffs offering views of Kamloops Lake and the Columbia and Cascade Mountains from every hole. Also planned for the $500-million resort community near the city of Kamloops is a 100-slip marina, an equestrian centre, three hotels and more than 1,000 homes.
"Blockbuster mountain views, rolling grasslands and desert plains make the Thompson-Okanagan a spectacular canvas for golf-course design," says McBroom, a Toronto-based golf architect with a growing international reputation. "Add vineyards, water sports and all the other attractions and there's almost no limit to the region's potential as a summer tourist destination."
Stretching from the U.S. border, where the northern tip of the Sonoran Desert snakes between the mountains into British Columbia, northeast to the town of Valemount near the Alberta boundary, the Thompson-Okanagan basks in an average of more than 2,000 hours of sunshine annually. Apples, peaches, plums, strawberries, cherries and raspberries grow in abundance. Also driving the summertime economy are fishing, boating, dude ranches, outdoor theatre, and jazz and country music festivals. Come winter, the marquee draw is Big White, the largest ski resort in the B.C. interior.
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Despite these other advantages, tourism officials agree that it's the combination of fine wine and championship fairways that has propelled the Thompson-Okanagan into the spotlight. In Canada, only Ontario's Niagara Peninsula is able to offer visitors a similarly attractive mix of grapes and greens.
"Surveys show that golf travellers spend more per trip and travel more often than other tourists," says Miles Prodan, executive director of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association.
"They're a sophisticated, high-income audience with an often passionate interest in food and wine. Golf and wine is the perfect tourism marriage."
Once the producers of the sort of plonk that came packaged in cartons and had "Ripple" or "Duck" in the name, local wineries finally got serious about their product after the enactment of the North American free trade agreement in 1989, which removed provincial legislation taxing B.C. wines at half the rate of imports. Guided by experienced winemakers hired from around the world, local vineyards soon began winning awards at prestigious wine fairs and attracting the attention of tourists.
Throughout the region, glitzy resorts rose to accommodate the influx of visitors. Property values soared (high-end vacation properties now sell for $450,000 and up). And top golf architects began sculpting courses through the rolling red hills of a northern oasis where rain delays are rare and the playing season, often stretching from late March to early November, is one of Canada's longest.
Most of the early golf-course development centred on bustling Kelowna, on the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake, a theatrically steep-banked 110-kilometre-long waterway linking the city of 111,000 with the smaller communities of Penticton to the south and Vernon to the north.
Just across from Kelowna's recently expanded international airport is the Okanagan Golf Club, offering two 18-hole layouts that tumble through ponderosa pine forests. Canadian architect Les Furber built dramatic elevation changes and multitiered fairways into the club's Quail Course, while Jack Nicklaus's Golden Bear Design produced a mix of links-style and parkland holes at the Bear Course.
Two other standouts among the 14 courses in the Kelowna area are Gallagher's Canyon Golf and Country Club, a Furber-Bill Robinson hillside collaboration offering panoramic views of the valley below, and the Harvest Golf Club, which another leading Canadian architect, Graham Cooke, routed through vineyards and orchards overlooking Okanagan Lake.
Though Kelowna has long been the hub, it was the 1991 opening of Predator Ridge Golf Resort near Vernon that put the Thompson-Okanagan region on the map of Canadian golf. The 486-hectare property's scenic landscape of clear lakes, fast-rushing streams and wheatgrass meadows includes a central lodge, two- and three-bedroom luxury cottages, as well as 27 superb golf holes designed by Furber (21 holes) and Nicklaus's company (six holes). Work on an additional nine-hole layout will begin next spring.
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