1 2 3 A. J. Taylor sets to work on the jewel in the British Pacific Properties’ crown – a 160-acre golf course. (Shown above) clockwise from top left: J.T. Watson, Landscape Architect; Stanley Thompson, Course Architect; John Anderson, Property Manager; A. J. T. Taylor, BPP Director; and Stan Conway, Engineer.

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Choosing An Architect

In July 1932, Taylor had a business meeting in New York’s legendary Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with Stanley G. Thompson of Thompson-Jones and Co. Golf and Landscape Architects with offices in Toronto and Rochester, New York. They had met briefly in Manhattan the previous summer, and although he had not yet seen the site, Thompson had agreed to take on the job of designing a golf course on the rugged mountainside. With spectacular mountain courses at Jasper and Banff already on his list of credentials, the Canadian-born Thompson was considered to be one of North America’s premier golf architects, and Taylor wanted nothing less for his British Properties’ showpiece. For the next four years, while the course was under construction, Taylor and Thompson would hold occasional meetings in New York, with decisions made there and relayed back to British Pacific Properties’ Resident Manager John Anderson and Course Superintendent Stan Conway.

Taylor had hired J. F. Dawson, of Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects of Brookline, Mass., to work with Thompson, another move that underscored Taylor’s penchant for hiring nothing but the best. Olmsted Brothers was the first company ever to register as “Landscape Architects,” justifying their craft by designing the layout of New York’s Central Park and also the grounds of the White House.

In February of 1932, Thompson visited the West Vancouver site and put his course design on paper while Conway had his crew at work on the awesome task of turning a mountain wilderness into a golf course nestled in one of the world’s most beautiful settings. Photos taken at the time pictured the crude swath being laboriously hacked through great piles of stumps and shattered rock. The flat rock promontory that still showed the scars of the fire that had destroyed Hadden Hall was left untouched for the moment, awaiting the construction of the clubhouse.

The Course Opens

The course opened to the public in the summer of 1937, with newly hired pro Jock McKinnon doing an admirable job of selling memberships. The affable Scot was also recruiting some fine local golfing talent to showcase the new course.

With the tender Capilano greens and fairways being nursed back to health following the severe winter of 1937, it was not until 1938 that play on the course really began in earnest. Construction of the clubhouse, which was planned for completion in 1938 at a cost of $73,000, was also underway.

One of the first guests invited to try on both the golf course and the new pro’s game for size was a local player of note named Kenneth McKenzie Black. Black rated as a fine catch for the new club as he was generally considered the finest amateur golfer in Canada.

Black not only decided to join the club, but also to buy and build on adjacent property, thus becoming one of the first of canny A. J. T. Taylor’s colonists. The lot was on Eastcot Road, just across from the 7th fairway, and on Labour Day weekend the next year he moved into his new house with his bride, the former Mayme Gehrke. The following year they became charter members of the newly formed club.

The clubhouse was finished in late 1938, but because of long delays in getting various furnishings shipped from England via the Panama Canal, it would not be opened until the following spring. By fitting coincidence, 1938 also marked the opening of the Lions Gate Bridge, A. J. T. Taylor’s hard-won gateway to the North Shore Promised Land.

By the end of the summer of ‘39, the number of members signed up to join the club reached 50. That wasn’t great but not bad considering that money was still tight, the world already had a touch of the war jitters, and the trip to West Van from Vancouver was still considered a day-long safari.
Two momentous occasions, linked by history.

The clubhouse opening in the spring of 1939 was coincident with another ceremony of equally grand proportions: the Official Opening of the Lions Gate Bridge.

The two occasions were linked by history, for without one there would not have been the other. Not, at least for many years to come, after the slow and painful recovery from the ravages of World War Two. The development of the Properties and the construction of the golf course were premised on the construction of the bridge, and that construction was certainly hastened by the British Pacific Properties’ development plan. And now, within the span of a fortnight, the Capilano clubhouse had been officially christened and the tollgates of the magnificent new Lions Gate Bridge were swung open for the first time. With King George and Queen Elizabeth presiding at the bridge ceremony, it was a gala day for Vancouver.