By Jeff D'Andrea

P.A. man pens book about Canada’s greatest golf course designer

Dec 9, 2018 | 11:00 AM

James Harris has been a family doctor in Prince Albert for the better part of 35 years, but he has two other passions close to him; golf and history.

He combined both of those into a five-year product and his newest book, Stanley Thompson and Icons of Canada.

The book is an in-depth, 504-page look at Stanley Thompson, who is credited with designing up to 150 golf courses across Canada and the United States, the Caribbean and South America.

Harris discusses every part of Thompson’s life, from when he fell in love with golf as a 10-year-old caddy at the Toronto Golf Club, to designing courses across the country during the Great Depression, and his eventual death in 1953.

There are 95 Thompson-designed courses around the world that are still around today. Harris has played on about 30 of them himself and said there is something special playing on a course Thompson envisioned.

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“He had a special flare. He was a genius in the golden age of golf architecture of the 1920s and ’30s,” Harris said. “There’s some kind of a feeling, an appeal that people don’t sense right away.”

One of those courses is the Waskesiu Golf Course, which Thompson and company designed and worked on from 1927 until it opened in 1936. Harris talks about the course, and the origin behind the infamous Lobstick tree found on the course’s first fairway.

But Stanley Thompson and Icons of Canada, as the title suggests, is much more than a biography of one of the greatest golf course designers.

The book intertwines itself with other important historical people and events at the time. It goes through everything from Sir John A. MacDonald founding the country of Canada, to the Gold Rush, the Great Depression and both World Wars.  There are some local Saskatchewan historical nuggets as well, such as the humble beginnings of Regina as a ‘Pile of Bones.’

Harris goes into great detail about each one of these events and uses them to give context to Thompson’s career and his life.

To his surprise, the reviews Harris has received for his work are not solely from golf-heads.

“It’s actually interesting. The personal feedback I’ve had has been more from people that don’t golf very much, they just like the book,” Harris said. “They like the history, they like the story and they like what this guy, Stanley Thompson, accomplished over his career—which I found quite fascinating.”

This is Harris’ third book, all of which have been about golf with local significance.  

His first was Prince Albert and its Golf Course, published in 2009 for the 100th anniversary of the course. His authoring journey continued with A Stanley Thompson Masterpiece in 2010.

But what separates Harris’ newest work from his older projects, is he had to get sources and documents from all across Canada. It took about five years of compiling and writing to finish.

The self-published Stanley Thompson and Icons of Canada is available at Amy’s on Second, the Stanley Thompson Society, and McNally Robinson.

Jeff.dandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_paNOW