Thompson, Jones & Co. Golf & Landscape Architects

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Thompson, Jones & Co. Golf & Landscape Architects

n.d.

Stanley Thompson (September 18, 1894 – January 4, 1953) was a Canadian golf course architect. He
was born in Toronto. He graduated from Malvern Collegiate Institute, and attended the Ontario Agricultural College (now the University of Guelph) for one year. He served with the Canadian military in Europe during World War I. Upon returning to Canada after the war, he became a full-time golf course architect, going into business himself by 1923. In the 1920s there was a rapid expansion of golf and new courses were needed to accommodate the millions of new players, so Thompson and his peers were kept very busy.
He designed courses from 1912-1952, mostly in Canada, with a philosophy of preserving the natural lay and flow of the land. He got his start with George Cumming, longtime professional at the Toronto Golf Club, who had designed several Canadian courses around the turn of the 20th century.
Thompson's many world-famous courses include the Banff Springs Hotel Golf Course in Banff, Alberta, the Jasper Park Golf Course in Jasper, Alberta, and the Highlands Links in Ingonish, Nova Scotia, all three which are publicly accessible and located in Canadian National Parks. Banff Springs and Jasper Park earned him a worldwide reputation. Three outstanding private clubs designed by Thompson are the Capilano Golf and Country Club in West Vancouver, British Columbia, the Royal Mayfair Golf Club in Edmonton, Alberta, and the St. George's Golf and Country Club in Toronto. In 1948, Thompson was a co-founder, with Donald Ross, of the American Society of Golf Course Architects ([1]), and helped to train many top golf course architects, including Robert Trent Jones; Thompson and Jones were partners for several years in the 1930s. Thompson was an excellent player himself, competing with success several times in the Canadian Amateur Championship, and he had four brothers -- Nicol, Frank, Mathew, and Bill -- all of whom became outstanding Canadian players in the 1920s.
The Stanley Thompson Society provides a list of 178 courses which Thompson laid out, had constructed, or remodeled through one of the companies that he worked for or managed in the years 1912-1953. Geographically, the courses are located in:[1]
Canada (144 courses)
USA (26 courses)
Brazil (4 courses)
Colombia (2 courses)
Jamaica (2 courses)
Thompson was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1980. Golf historian James A. Barclay wrote a biography of Thompson entitled The Toronto Terror.

During the years 1936, 1937 and 1938 Little Long Lac Gold Mines allocated funds for the beginning of surface clearing and equipment for a golf course. Through the personnel of the local mines the services of Stanley Thompson of Hamilton were obtained to design the course. The spring of 1938 saw 110 men, teams of horses and tractors begin to clear the forest. Some of the ground was muskeg, some high and rolling. In one month they cut, stumped, slashed, filled swamp, trimmed the crests of knolls, laid out fairways, set up tees and set down greens. Play began on the course in June with 150 members. The first dance was held in a Geraldton restaurant because there was no clubhouse.

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