Stanley Thompson was a man of grand designs, and Capilano was one of his grandest.

While A.J.T. Taylor was the visionary behind the creation of Capilano Golf & Country Club, the fulfillment fell to a Mr. Stanley Thompson.

When Thompson first set eyes upon the 160 acres of timbered West Vancouver wilderness, he was already a legend in the making. Dubbed the 'Toronto Terror' - a moniker he earned from his reputation as, depending on the source, a fiercely competitive amateur golfer or a hard-drinking businessman - he was born in Toronto on September 18th in 1893.

Through the Roaring Twenties the short, stocky Thompson was known across North America as a golf course architect capable of massive scale projects, the first being Jasper Park Lodge course, carved through the pine woods of Jasper National Park and opened for play in 1924. Soon after, the renowned Scottish course architect Alistair MacKenzie played Jasper Park and called it one of the finest courses on which he ever laid eyes, and putter. That same year Thompson made history when he designed the world's first million-dollar golf course: the monumental Banff Springs. The massive scale of the construction job, which included the dynamiting of an Alberta mountain, and the spectacular Rocky Mountain setting, would come to define Thompson's building career in the 1920's.

Thompson and his companies designed, built or renovated some 100 golf courses during that decade. The stock market crash of October 1929 and subsequent Great Depression slowed that roaring and prolific pace, but Thompson, now operating his design and maintenance companies out of New York City, still found a way to build some of his most impressive courses during this economically uncertain period. Capilano was the jewel.

Only The Best Will Do

A.J.T. Taylor was well aware of Thompson's reputation when he went searching for an architect up to the job of creating a golf course to match the world-class British Pacific Properties' burgeoning real estate setting. To Taylor's way of thinking, only the best would do, and after an initial meeting in 1931, the architect signed on to bring Taylor's vision to life. And to Thompson's way of thinking, working with a development company bankrolled by the Guinness brewery fortune during the lean 1930's was a good bet in tough times. The making of a legend had indeed begun.

Like the renowned British architects he admired so much, Thompson's first step in designing a new course was to spend a couple of days simply walking the property to get a sense of the subtle changes to the rise and fall of the land and to visualize how the 18 holes and clubhouse would fit together. One can only imagine the architect's excitement - and his heart rate - when he first walked Capilano's rugged mountainside in 1932. Armed with sketches roughed out while trudging through the imposing landscape, he returned to the New York offices of Thompson, Jones and Thompson (the golf and landscape architect company Stanley formed with protege Robert Trent Jones and his own brother Bill), and fashioned plasticine models of all 18 holes that would become the Capilano course. It is difficult to imagine Taylor orchestrating and overseeing construction of the course and clubhouse from thousands of miles away in England when the major forms of communication were still just the telegram and mailed letter. For the next four years, correspondence flew between West Vancouver and New York City, with Thompson micromanaging all aspects of the course construction, from the initial clearing of the land to the final sod and soil selection.

Tweaking The Course

On occasion, the golf course architect would travel by train from New York to Vancouver to see for himself the construction work and to do some on-course tweaking. It was during one such visit that the ‘Toronto Terror’s’ tweaking caught the attention of the West Vancouver constabulary.

Doug Carrick, the Canadian architect responsible for a major restoration to Capilano in the 1990’s, recalls a story Robbie Robinson would tell about the lengths Thompson would go to get his design just right.

On one visit, Thompson was troubled by something when he stood with Robinson in the area that is now the clubhouse site. “Robbie,” he began, “those trees down to the left of the 1st hole are blocking a glorious view of the Burrard Inlet and the city. We need to get those trees out of there,” Thompson concluded, then instructed his associate to, “Send the men down and have them clear those trees.” “Those trees are not on the property, Mr. Thompson,” Robinson cautiously said to his meticulous mentor. “Well they need to come out!” reiterated Thompson. “Send the men down to remove them.”

A crew was dispatched to remove the offending trees, and the next day a West Van policeman arrived on site looking for “the man in charge,” only to be told Mr. Thompson was nowhere to be found. The following day, the same story – the policeman arrived looking for Thompson only to be told no one had seen him recently.

Finally, on the third day, the long arm of the law caught up with the cagey architect. Upon being told he must accompany him back to the police station to be questioned about cutting trees on adjacent property, Thompson asked to be granted one simple request.

“Before you arrest me Mr. Sheriff,” he pleaded, “I need to take you up to the clubhouse site to show you what we are doing.”

Upon arriving at the clubhouse site, Thompson turned to the policeman and with a sweep of his hand to the south asked, “Isn’t this the most glorious view you’ve ever seen in your life? If we didn’t cut those trees, you would never have been able to see this view.”

The officer pondered the magnificent sight that stretched out before them, turned to the short man in the tweed jacket, fedora and walking stick and said, “Carry on Mr. Thompson, but please don’t cut any more trees that are not on your property!”

This was typical of the exacting standard of excellence that Taylor expected from Thompson, and the architect did not disappoint.

Life After Capilano

Capilano opened for play in 1937, and two years later the finished and furnished clubhouse completed the package. Thompson’s work was done, and true to his 'rolling stone gathers no moss’ philosophy, he didn’t take time to look back. In 1938 he built the last of his legendary courses, the links-style Highlands Links layout atop Cape Breton Island’s Smokey Mountain, the highest point in Nova Scotia.

Thompson did his part for the war effort during the early 1940’s, working for the Department of National Defence examining the wear and tear on turf on Allied airfields. In 1948, he was among the charter membership of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, and a year later served as that organization’s president. Earlier in the decade he and a couple of associates bought the Cutten Club in Guelph, Ontario, and it was here, in a converted farmhouse he dubbed 'Dormie House,’ that one of Canada’s greatest contributors to the game of golf spent his final years. He died on January 4, 1953.

Stanley Thompson was certainly a man for his times, having made and lost three or more fortunes during his lifetime, epitomizing the boom-bust era in which he came to prominence.

Not only did the 'Toronto Terror’ survive the highs and lows of those uncertain times, he created some the finest golf courses in the world, and left an undeniable stamp on the game he loved.

Seven decades later, Capilano is one of his greatest legacies.