Jasper Park Rises from the Ashes

00:00:00
Speaker 1: The golf course at Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in Alberta, Canada is among the most stunning golf courses in the world. Certainly, it's one of the key designs of the great Canadian architect Stanley Thompson. So I was really sad to hear last year that the lodge, the golf course, and the town that's nearby were badly damaged by a wildfire. So I've been eager for a while to get an update on how Jasper Park is doing, and that's what's happening in today's episode. I'm talking with Ian Andrew, who is an accomplished golf architect as well as the world's leading authority on Stanley Thompson. Very likely, Ian is currently working with Jasper Park to bring the golf course back to its full strength, so I'm excited to talk with him about that process as well as get into the history and architecture of Jasper Park. I'm Garrett Morrison and this is Design Golf. Hey, so one quick note before we get started here. When I started the conversation with Ian, his mike was sort of rubbing against the collar of his sweatshirt, and so that's what you'll hear in the first few minutes of this podcast a little bit of wrestling that does not continue throughout the interview. We sorted out the problem, just wanted to let you know about that. So for those who are not familiar with Jasper Park, maybe non Canadians out there, where is this course and what is some of the basic top line information we should know about it.

00:01:42
Speaker 2: So Jasper Park is in Jasper National Park and it's west of Edmonton by four hours.

00:01:50
Speaker 3: It's north of Beef Springs.

00:01:52
Speaker 2: By probably the greatest four hour drive in Canada. If you're going to see one or the other both ideally both. It is the single best drive you'll ever find. It's through the rocky mountains and it's glaciers all the way, so it's quite spectacular. It was a course built in a national park. So one of the interesting things is two of our greatest golf courses were built by railroads as destinations. And so what you've got is you've got with CP, you've got bamp Springs and with CN you've got Jasper National Park. So they took over a project that was kind of middling along, and then.

00:02:38
Speaker 3: What happened was.

00:02:38
Speaker 2: They end up sort of revisiting it a couple of times, and then finally with Stanley Thompson, they built the eighteen holes that we know today.

00:02:45
Speaker 1: So there's a small town called Jasper near the lodge. Right, you have the Jasper Park Lodge, you have the Jasper Park golf course, and then the town of Jasper. What's that like.

00:02:54
Speaker 3: Jasper is a small town.

00:02:56
Speaker 2: I actually can't tell you the population, but if I was going to give it a guess, maybe something as much as sort of three thousand to four thousand people, might be as much as five Actually, now I think about it, and it's really the support system not only for Jasper Park Lodge, which is not in town, it's just outside of town, but it's also a support system as well for Jasper National Park. So a lot of people live there and then usually end up working with either. There's a series of resorts and hotels and restaurants in town. Fabulous town. I'd highly recommend it as a destination. And then a lot of people also work with the Jasper Park Lodge.

00:03:37
Speaker 1: So, before we get deeper into the courses architecture in the history, what happened in Jasper and Jasper National Park last year?

00:03:49
Speaker 2: So last year, there was a wildfire, and the wildfire started up I think near Athabasca Falls, if I'm not mistaken, and it was a lightning strike. And one of the things that's taken place a lot out west is pine beetle has decimated the forests, and so I would say a third or more of the forest was actually dead. So if you can imagine pine beetle decimated the area, then you've got all that canopy that's.

00:04:27
Speaker 3: In the park that's dried out. And so what.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: Happened when during a very dry period they had lightning strike that set the area of blaze.

00:04:39
Speaker 3: The area started to burn.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: Very quickly, and unfortunately for them when this took place, it was I think thirty forty one hour winds. The winds actually got stronger over time, is the wildflower of fire began to burn.

00:04:54
Speaker 3: Its way towards Jasper.

00:04:55
Speaker 2: So essentially it started up the Athabasca River valley and sort of pushed its way towards Jasper town site. I think what caught us all a little off guard was it ended up burning. If I'll apologize if I got this wrong, but I think it's about forty thousand square miles. But as it pushed its way up the valley. Everybody just kind of assumed at some point they would gain control over it, and it just got worse and worse because the winds were so high, and then it ended up burning its way to the golf course. Fortunately for the golf course, it ended up actually protecting the resort, and they kind of made us stand.

00:05:40
Speaker 3: At the resort because it's.

00:05:43
Speaker 2: Very historically important resort, and they made us stand at the town site. But about thirty five to town Goup.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: Burnt.

00:05:56
Speaker 2: So Jasperin is in recovery mode. A good example is the superintendent lost his house, the director of golf didn't. And that's one of the things about this event is one family survived it, nobody's unscathed. That's sort of the point I was going to make with this is you've got families who have managed to still have their houses standing just because of where they happen to be in town. And then you've got people they work with, their friends or family who have lost their house or their residents, or their or their business. And so everybody who has any connection to jasper is just sort of devastated, because you know, everybody I know.

00:06:44
Speaker 3: It's sort of a fifty to fifty. It's just a.

00:06:46
Speaker 2: Flip them on whether things worked out or didn't. But it didn't matter. Everybody's still heartbroken. I think some people are more heartbroken who've actually not lost anything, because they feel it's sort of the survivor's guilt.

00:06:59
Speaker 3: That comes with that.

00:07:00
Speaker 2: So with the golf course, the golf course got burnt in the process. The one thing that happened was where you've got all that timber, it was burning so hot. And I'm going to sort of jump ahead a little bit, but it burnt so hot that you actually, rather than burning the pine cones and opening them up for regeneration, it's actually burnt so hot that it's actually decimated the pine cones too, so there's nothing to regenerate. So there's a place a much further up where you can go where you can see regeneration, and beside it you can see areas of no regeneration. What that is is if fires get too hot, there's no regeneration anymore. We've actually got that on the golf course. We've got both further from the golf course where it burnt around on the mountain, there's one of my favorite places for hiking short hike is Malin Canyon.

00:07:52
Speaker 3: Malign Canyon.

00:07:53
Speaker 2: Everything is burnt, everything is blown over, there's not a tree standing, and it will not regenerate because there's nothing left. So it's actually soil and everything's washed into the canyon where all the walkways and everything are.

00:08:06
Speaker 3: So this is sort of what happened.

00:08:07
Speaker 2: You've got spots where it's decimated the burn where you're not going to even get regeneration. This was a learning curve for me over the last little while.

00:08:17
Speaker 3: And then you've got.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: Other areas where the golf course, for example, it burnt into the golf course but never got hot enough to other than burning the trees down. It didn't get hot enough to.

00:08:28
Speaker 3: Decimate the cones. But the other thing is.

00:08:31
Speaker 2: Also started to reduce the fire and so it wasn't burning as hot, it wasn't traveling as easy. It actually made it easy for them to make a stand. So there are buildings burnt in Jasper Park Lodge, there's four or five buildings burnt, but they were able to save the lodge and they were able to save the majority of it. So essentially, it's funny we think about golf and get all golf centric, but the great thing is a golf course. When it burns, it's not a big deal. It's just the trace. The ground is still the ground, The golf course is still the golf course, and you can have turf up and going and everything up and going very.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: Quickly, which they did.

00:09:11
Speaker 2: The only thing that's interesting was all the theater systems at Jasper Park are all above ground, so that all got burnt, so there's no supply lines anymore, and that's sort of something they're working on now. So it's sort of a long explanation, but that sort of gives you. When I went there, I went there three weeks after the fire and the heart The hardest part for me was I couldn't like I was seeing burnt coming on the way in, and I had a very specific way. I was given a one day pass by Parks Canada to go and review it with Fairmont, and I couldn't bring myself to go anywhere near the town site because I knew what had happened over.

00:09:51
Speaker 3: On the town site.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: And even when I stayed there in the spring, it's devastating to be there.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: You just feel you feel bad for the people.

00:09:59
Speaker 2: And my wife and I have been to Jasper six or seven times, and we hike there outside of playing golf as well, and it's just hard to not go there and feel for the people. So we go there. I've been there in the spring, and we'll go there again just to try and support the town.

00:10:19
Speaker 1: Let's go from there. What's going on at Jasper Park right now? And rewind a little bit, go back in history. How did the development of the Jasper Park Lodge and golf course initially come about?

00:10:34
Speaker 2: So the railroads were looking for destinations and they built places for people to like. They wanted to build some places for people to go to. So that's how you got Bamp Springs, That's how you got Jasper Park Lodge.

00:10:49
Speaker 3: So Bam Springs is Canadian.

00:10:51
Speaker 2: Pacific Railway, Jasper Park Lodge is a Canadian National Railway. Two very competitive railways, and that actually plays out in the long run even.

00:11:02
Speaker 3: With the golf courses.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: So they had built the lodge first, but you're trying to give people a reasona co mode there. So with Jasper Park Lodge, you've got voting, with Lake Bovert, you've got hiking that you can do. But adding a golf course to that created a destination.

00:11:21
Speaker 3: So they hired.

00:11:22
Speaker 2: Stanley Thompson and he built them essentially a destination golf course.

00:11:26
Speaker 1: And what is Stanley Thompson's stature in the history of golf architecture, Just so people who maybe haven't experiences courses have an idea of who he is.

00:11:35
Speaker 2: If you're asking me to give you a list of sort of the fundamental seven to ten golf course architects that shape golf course architectural history, ignoring the immediate times, I would put Stanley Thompson on that list. Very Canadian centric career, great architect. Anybody who's gone out to see any of one of I've always referred to them as Big five Cape Breton Highlands now known to Highland Links, Saint George's in Toronto Private Club, Jasper Banff, and then Capilano. If you've seen those five golf courses, you'll know why he's revered by all architects current past. His peers in particular as well, all held him in high regard. He was just sort of the greatest architect in Canada has ever had, and it's going to take a lot for somebody else to knock him off that pedestal. He's the prime influence for anybody. He's a Canadian architect. Scale, it was just a master with scale. But one of his great secrets was extremely well read man and understood the whole concept of borrowed scenery. So I think that was capability Brown if I remember correctly, and he had taken that essentially and probably applied that better than any other architect in history, and I do include every architect and current. I think he was the master of all masters when it came to borrowed scenery.

00:13:05
Speaker 1: Well, I'd like to eventually get into how he used that concept at Jasper Park. But first of all, what are some of the specifics of the property at Jasper Park? And then how did Thompson route the golf course through it?

00:13:19
Speaker 2: So it's a surprisingly rolling piece of land. So what he did was he essentially on the front nine worked his way very quickly out to a valley. And so that valley kind of is a prominent spot you keep coming back to. So you get there for three, four, you play out of it in five, but you play kind of back into it on six. There's a step in the land that he goes and uses for seven, eight, nine up top, which is the famous shot for Cleopatra coming back to the valley, but ten is back in the valley, eleven is playing out of the valley. And then what he does he takes you to a spot called Lake Bovart, and so thirteenth is a par five that kind of tumbles down to it. Anybody who's seen a picture of Jasper National Park or j Park golf Course has seen the tea shot on fourteen, which is over Lake Bovart, Bad Baby, the little par three plays along it, and then sixteen again on the approach shot plays over it. Now you on seventeen, it's on your left the whole way, which you never knew it was there because of all the pine trees, and it's actually on the left of eighteen across the road where but essentially he worked around those features.

00:14:35
Speaker 3: So he's found the valleys and he's found.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: Sort of steps in the land that he's used within the routing. But there's a really tremendous amount of elevation change on the golf course. The holes have got some pretty regular drops, and then of course you get out to Cleopatra and you've got that incredible te shot where from the tee to the back of the and when I say the back of the green, the fall off of the back of the green, it's got to be about seventy feet the fall.

00:15:05
Speaker 3: Off of the back of the green. I thinks eighteen feet alone.

00:15:07
Speaker 1: So and when you say Cleopatra, that's the name of one of the holes, right, yes, it is. I'm curious right away as to where the name Cleopatra for this hole came from.

00:15:17
Speaker 2: So this has been a fascinating revelation for me because it's there's nothing worse than working hard with researching history and then disproving something and then running into something that appears to reprove something. So with Cleopatra, when he built the hole, originally.

00:15:38
Speaker 3: The description was it was.

00:15:42
Speaker 2: Like a naked woman reclining on the ground, and I always thought that that was I don't know if I can swear or not, but BS. Anyway, let's call it BS. So there's definitely a right side mound, left side mound.

00:15:57
Speaker 3: You've definitely got an advantage.

00:15:58
Speaker 2: There's a ground option to play on this long part of three between the two hillocks, and it is the ideal way to play. Your perfect way to play the whole is actually it's over two hundred yard hole, but your perfect shot is about one seventy five and let it feed and it's it's foolproof if you find the slot.

00:16:19
Speaker 3: So it's I always kind of looked.

00:16:21
Speaker 2: At that and kind of went, yeah, okay, sure, maybe it was named after the fact that it just happened to look that way. But I got an image sent to me by Perry Cooper, who is a former superintendent, and it's got a pond in front of the hole. And if you've ever seen the hole, there's no way your brain can get anything to tell you that there was any way there was any sort of pond in front. It's triangular shaped, it's very small and very deep, and it would be incredibly well placed. So god, yeah, I know, and I didn't know. I honestly didn't know what to do with this when. But the part I couldn't understand was when it was. And then finally I was able to sort of figure out it was early on Hull was renovated. We'll touch on that that Thompson built Jasper Park and then built bamp The people involved with Jasper could clearly tell that BAMF was a better golf course, and what it was was he had learned a lot of lessons while he'd gone out on this grand scale trying to fit the site.

00:17:32
Speaker 3: Larger greens, larger fairways.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: Clearing was over one and a half times normal, close to almost one point eight the width of everything he'd done before that scale was great.

00:17:42
Speaker 3: Other than the fact.

00:17:43
Speaker 2: That when you look at those photos from I've got all the opening day photos.

00:17:46
Speaker 3: When you look at those photos, the.

00:17:49
Speaker 2: One thing is people look incredibly small. They're kind of dwarfed by the setting. He cleared it all out to make use of what you see in the mountains. But what happened was there's human scale to the golf course. He goes to do bamf right afterwards, he clears the same ws but not quite as wide. But what he does is he takes his greens back down to more of a let's say, sort of the six to eight range instead of sort of the eight to ten range. Takes his greens down. What he does is he breaks up all his bunkers. When he's got larger bunkers, he does very elaborate forms with the bunkers rather than these big, large, simple forms on a massive scale. And what he does is he breaks up the bunkers either by numbers or by details to put human scale back in the golf course. And what happens with the golf course is because it's in human scale, it just absolutely works.

00:18:47
Speaker 3: It is a.

00:18:49
Speaker 2: Masterclass in how to deal with a grand scale with enough details not to lose the person within the scale. That everything feels within a scale we can understand. And immediately, of course, what happens with cn is they look at that and they go that golf course is way more interesting than ours, even though we've got a better property. Jasper Park is a better property in than BAMP. It's not even a question. And what they did was come back and he did a bunker renovation. And the bunker renovation was to put bays and fingers and noses, even the occasional island, and to put details in. So it's still got the grand scale, but it's got more human details. And what it did was it collapse the scale to a point that people felt more comfortable within it. And what it did was the clearing still works. And the views are better than BAMP. It's actually got better views than BAMF when it comes to the mountains. And the golf course is rooted around the idea of every whole points to a different mountain range, and even the whole names identified that that's what he's doing with the routing. But what it does is there's enough reduction in the scale to me it could feel comfortable as a player, and it brings you back to the space comfortably. And it's a double masterclass and sort of one is just showing, holy crap, I just figured this out, and the other one is I can do all these things, and I can make something that wasn't working to scale come to scale.

00:20:20
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting application of the idea of scale in golf course construction, because how I'm processing this idea is that in Jasper Park and Banff Springs, Thompson had properties with a lot of natural massive scale, not only in the interior of the property, especially at Jasper, but also in the views around the property, the big mountains that you could see that scale of those properties and their surroundings overwhelmed humans, right, yes, And so I guess part of what these golf course features could do. The features that Thompson apparently learned how to build at BAMF kind of with more detail and more of the human scale to them, is that they kind of serve as an intermediary between the massive scale of the property and its surroundings and the humans playing the golf course, so that the humans feel like they can relate to this property right. They kind of serve as a way to let golfers into the property and not make them feel like they're just being overwhelmed by all this massiveness.

00:21:42
Speaker 2: I remember, I think it was Jeff Cornish or either that or I found a quote that the talked about Stanley Thompson wanting people at VAMP to pay attention to the golf course, to not just look at the mountains. You know, whether that's ego driven or just driven by common sense, but the idea is he had to do enough.

00:22:08
Speaker 3: He had to put enough bunker.

00:22:09
Speaker 2: There's a lot more bunkering at Bamp Springs, and there's, as I said, a lot more detailing. There's also much stronger carry angles in some cases, sort of like Monterey Peninsula Short Course, where Mike Strands is given an enormous scale, and the sort of the genius in what Mike did there was he swung the fairways so wide that it filled the space so it didn't get out of context, and then went with bunkering big enough.

00:22:41
Speaker 3: Well.

00:22:42
Speaker 2: Stanley did this back in twenty seven to twenty eight. He created wide swings with the fairways, but he filled it with bunkering. At bamp he did do some swings with the fairways, but not as wild, and he kept the bunkering more so to the side at Jasper, and one of the lessons from it was to go more aggressive with the swings when he went in to bamf. What was interesting was when he made he did make some changes to Jasper how it was bunkered, and he came back.

00:23:13
Speaker 3: As well after the war.

00:23:15
Speaker 2: And that's the fascinating part for me was this is recent knowledge for me, but the whole back of the eleventh Green, which is really wild with its elaborate mounding and the back of five, has actually.

00:23:27
Speaker 3: Done post World War two.

00:23:29
Speaker 2: He continued to make changes and add more bunkering to it to try and get things moving framing.

00:23:36
Speaker 3: So he actually did.

00:23:37
Speaker 2: He did quite a bit of work to Jasper after the fact as well, just adding more to bring your eye to the fairways, to the greens to golf. So I didn't realize that he continued on post World War two in making some adjustments. So I knew stuff happened, I just didn't know the dates till talent and found a report and I got a chance to read that report, and it was full of new news for me.

00:24:14
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you by the USGA Green Section. Success on the course starts with the right information. The USGA Green Section Record keeps you connected with the latest turf research, management strategies, and regional updates, all for free. Now I'm a reader of the USGA Green Section Record, I think it's a really excellent publication and it lets me know what's going on in the world of agronomy and the world of golf course management. It's just an excellent regular update on that industry, which I think overall is somewhat undercovered in media. So I can personally recommend the USGA Green Section Record. And if you pair that with the USGA Moisture Meter, for instance, soil data that integrates seamlessly with the Deacon system, then you're really cooking with gas. So from insights to action, the USGA Green Section helps you manage smarter, Subscribe and learn more at USGA dot org slash course Care. Again, that's the USGA dot org slash course care all right, let's get back to the episode. You've mentioned a couple of times the concept of borrowed scenery.

00:25:37
Speaker 3: M h.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: How does that idea show up in the design of Jasper Park.

00:25:43
Speaker 2: So the super cool part about Jasper is it's got a whole series of peaks, and it's also got a series of ranges, and every hole lines up with either a range or an individual peak. So Pyramid Mountain is one of the most dominating mountains for all of Jasper, and.

00:26:02
Speaker 3: Part of it's the color.

00:26:05
Speaker 2: It's a reddish hue, which is unusual for all the mountains around there, and so it really stands out and when you stand on eleven t the backdrop is absolutely spot on. So I know one of the things I said when I was talking to Talon about it, because we ended up in a conversation about it a while ago, is I believe he had an idea what he was doing on that, and I think what happened was occasionally he realized as he's cleared the hole out that if he shifted something, because if you look at some of the clearing lines, there's sort of a wabble to a few of the clearing lines. So if that's your clearing line, there's all of a sudden, a little wobble and it's set over there. And I think what he did was he just moved a few things around to get a few things to line up. But he also didn't look directly at the peaks, like that wasn't the game he was playing. He wanted to identify what he was sharing. So to Caracut, it's not a lot look at the peaks. It's off to your side. Same with old Man coming down too. Old Man's actually up to your left. But there's no question when you look over knowing that the old Man is a face, and some feel it's an Indian head. There's sort of different views on what it is, but it's clear as day, and it's just.

00:27:25
Speaker 3: The way the rock is.

00:27:26
Speaker 2: It's the colors of the rock produce this wonderful face with obviously the shape. You clearly see the nose and it's got really angular nose features, but it almost looks like a human head. It's wild, but he gives that to you at an off angle. But there's no question when you stand looking at the second shot, looking at what you've got to do, everything's feeding towards the left, and when you let your eye wander out there, it is, and so you wander up, you can't miss it. And I remember playing there not knowing about it. I was immediately drawn up to that ridgeline and eventually to that specific shape.

00:28:06
Speaker 1: So it's not just a matter of like pointing golf holes at certain mountain ranges. It's about kind of varying the perspective in the line through which he might see at one of these borrowed scenery scenes.

00:28:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what he did was he.

00:28:24
Speaker 2: Found holes, but I think he had some options on a few of the holes, and I think he manipulated it to.

00:28:31
Speaker 3: Gain the best way to present. And that's the thing.

00:28:33
Speaker 2: Sometimes presenting a feature is not rooting it directly at it. Sometimes presenting the best presentation of a feature is working either parallel to it or working on an angle to it. And then what it does is it doesn't dominate the backdrop. It becomes part of the entire composition. And that's where I find.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: I've always liked.

00:29:01
Speaker 2: The view, particularly when you get into eight, and I think part of the distant view I just like because it actually shares a series of ridge lines that I really enjoy. But it's the interplay with ones going this way, another one's going that way. And you know, I think Bill Corsone who's always talked about looking for reverse cats or when away the fairway's falling that way and then the green sight's falling the opposite way. Well, think about Thompson doing the same thing, but doing that with the scenery instead.

00:29:35
Speaker 3: That's that's some pretty cool crap going on. Again. I'm doing good not to swear.

00:29:41
Speaker 1: I think crap is okay. I think we can I think we can get away with that one. So we've talked about a couple of things that make Jasper Park's architecture special, This idea of borrowed scenery, the use of scale. What were the redone bunkers like at Jasper Park? And now I think that maybe some people have an image in their minds of the bunkers at Bamp Springs with all their kind of wild tongues and capes and bays, and this just a sort of showy bunker style in a lot of ways, they're they're at Bamp. When Thompson came back to make some changes at Jasper Park, did he go for that same style? Is that what the vintage bunkers at Jasper no.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: And that's one of my favorite things about this is why he's just.

00:30:30
Speaker 1: The changed The.

00:30:31
Speaker 2: Pantheon bamp was way more loose edged than it looks even today. It was pretty wild and naturalistic and rough. Jasper even if it was redone had bays and noses and islands, but it had very controlled lines, very organized lines.

00:30:50
Speaker 3: There were.

00:30:52
Speaker 2: Wonderfully organic in places, and then they were Again. One of the things I had to learn with doing restoration of his work is you have to learn to build straight lines so something would be straight. And again I'm trying to think who sort of pointed that out to me. It might have been another one of those Jeff Cornish conversations. But if you look up in nature, you find in nature there are straight lines. So if you built everything organic, then it just comes across as organic. If you can mix your straight lines, your curves, your angles, your corners with some organic lines, you get something that's much more natural.

00:31:33
Speaker 3: Funny enough, natural has.

00:31:36
Speaker 2: A lot of stuff that I would look for in the wood shop to create straight lines with. And one of the things I had to learn when I was doing Saint George's was to actually build a bunch of straight lines and a bunch of perfect corners.

00:31:48
Speaker 3: And allow.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: As you're building and you're finishing, it evolves to something that's not perfectly square, and you just do you let that happen. And you know that as every layer, the topsoil going on, the turf going on, every layer is going to mute the rigid lines. But the funny part was it was Jim or Bean actually we ended up talking about straight lines. This goes back to when Pacific Dunes was first opening. We had a conversation about how you get natural bunkers and it involves way more straight lines than you ever can possibly imagine, and math and math and a lot more math than you would think too.

00:32:31
Speaker 1: More geometry than you might think. Yep. Yeah, because when people think of naturalistic bunkers they think of kind of the cloud like flowing shapes. That you're saying that there's more linearity involved in creating bunkers like this than they might.

00:32:48
Speaker 2: If you get everything to if everything flows cloud like, If everything flows, then all you get is something that essentially looks like a cloud. It's not that artistic, it's just moving. But if it's moving really regularly, it's actually almost upsetting to be organic but controlled. So you prefer it to be a little bit organic and a little bit loose, but it's still going to look manufactured.

00:33:17
Speaker 3: It has to.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: Have some things that sort of look like erosion has a tendency to be straighter, And if you think about naturalistic bunkers, you've got to start thinking about erosion and what would happen if we built something but we left it for a month, we had four or five major rainstorms, and then we had to finish it because we don't have any equipment on site. That actually is kind of how you make natural bunkers is you've got to think about erosion or evolution. What would happen, Where would the sand splash end up? Or what if a piece of equipment slipped down the side, but we just put all the grass back, because that's actually what the.

00:33:58
Speaker 3: Really old bunkers we like. Part of it is evolution.

00:34:03
Speaker 2: It's just they get a little bit of erosion, they get a little bit of damage, they get a little bit of the repairs soften one area out, they sharpen another area up, and it's the inconsistencies that make natural.

00:34:16
Speaker 1: So would you say that in Thompson's follow up work at Jasper Park that he got even further along in his development as a bunker builder than he was when he built bamf Springs.

00:34:29
Speaker 2: That is a very interesting question because I'm having to think about that one.

00:34:33
Speaker 1: I'm feeling like this is what you're implying, though, but this seems like it would be a new idea.

00:34:38
Speaker 2: Well, there was no question like the first set of bunkers he did were surprisingly plain.

00:34:43
Speaker 3: And now the thing is, Thompson's.

00:34:46
Speaker 2: Career started off with he started in the early twenties, and he was limited by what was going on. So you did have some cult examples just at that time, and you had some Willie Park work, but at that point a lot of things were very simple in nature, and even Thompson's earliest work there were some noses, there were even surprisingly in twenty three there were some islands, which that's super early in is he was playing with things, but it was fairly simple, rudimentary, and largely small in context of what he would do later on. So he was evolving as he went and I just think hard to believe, but by Bam Springs he had done half the work he ever would do. So he'd done forty golf courses and we're only talking about seven years, seven or eight years in total. Seven years, eight years, I guess by the end. But you can see as you go through all those golf courses he's trying things, trying new things. I think part of that new people, I think part of that. I do know he was traveling around to see other works, so he was learning as he was going. I do know he went to see Wingfoot when it was being built, so I know when he was during the war, he got out to Glenn Eagles.

00:36:15
Speaker 3: He even at.

00:36:16
Speaker 2: One point mentions Pine Valley of he admired it, but didn't want to do it, didn't want to be the one to build something like that. So he was seeing a lot of very interesting ideas. The interesting thing was Cornish told me that every once in a while he'd see something he'd think was clearly way better than he was doing and would actually make him depressed. And yeah, he did have an issue with depression, a little bit of an issue with depression. And he said, whenever he saw something he thought was really great, he was either excited by it or he had the blues, and that was sort of his reaction to it. But I think even if he had the blues, in the end, he was just I think the one thing he doesn't get credit for is being competitive. And I know he's super competitive with tilling Hass because he was pissed off that tilling Hass came to do Scarborough that he didn't get that commission, and so.

00:37:02
Speaker 3: We had a thing for.

00:37:03
Speaker 2: That was one of the fascinating parts about him is he had a thing for tilling asked, and yet he had this wonderful relationship with Charles Allison, like they were really friendly and remain friendly. From Allison's period where he came up Toronto golf and to New York downs.

00:37:19
Speaker 1: He wanted to be better though yes.

00:37:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we all do, I think, but I want to be better comes with striving to be better. You have to strive to be better to be better.

00:37:34
Speaker 3: And the other end of it is.

00:37:39
Speaker 2: You have to be willing to be stubborn. And not all of us, if I'm picking on a personal fault, not all of us have that ability to be stubborn or contentious or or difficult. Even you need to be difficult to be great.

00:37:59
Speaker 1: And what certainly drives a lot of people.

00:38:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it's funny.

00:38:03
Speaker 2: You can look at you can look at the people who've done really well, even the people with wonderful personalities like to take a Gill or a Bill and they still are. They know when to just hold.

00:38:17
Speaker 3: Their ground and that's what makes them great.

00:38:20
Speaker 2: Bill does it in a way that I'm fully convinced. Bill could tell you to f off to your face and have you appreciate the way he said it. He I just think that he's got the ability to inform you that he's not going to do something in a way that you actually appreciate the whole conversation and don't realize it untill after the fact sort of thing. He just he's just got a wonderful nature to him that it comes across at all moments, regardless of whether he's needing to say no, I don't really want to do that.

00:38:57
Speaker 1: So bringing this back to Stanley Thompson, he did have some with this edge about him. It drove him, you do, he could be difficult things with his golf courses, right, He'd evolved through the course of his career, and part of what makes Jasper Park interesting is that it was because he returned to it and made some changes. It was a document of some of that development. Ye a golf.

00:39:22
Speaker 3: Architect as a historian.

00:39:24
Speaker 2: For me, what's interesting is that's that's the moment where I was always trying to figure out when he became. My joke with a friend of mine was Stanley F. And Thompson is sort of when he became great, the person that we all go to study. And I think it was just this continuous evolution to Bamp Springs, and I think of Bam Springs essentially Bam Springs. He said, here's everything I can do, here's every trick I've got. And he never did it again, never built with as many bunkers, never went near his elaborate He actually said, okay, I can. I can throw down bunkers with the George Thomases and the Telling hass And you want to name whoever great bunker builder is, I can throw it down with any of them, and I can kick their ass. I've proven I can do it. And then what was interesting was I would say he added more and more restraint from that period forward and it just kept going. By the time he did Capilana, who he was doing bunkerless holes.

00:40:21
Speaker 3: By the time he did highland links.

00:40:23
Speaker 2: He did four or sorry five bunkerless Greens, relied on the land More did way less bunkering. I think he just proved something and then I think he Part of it was obviously circumstance wars, but part of it as well is I think he just I can do this, but I don't need to do that. I'm smart enough, and I think he just showed that he could do it hell of a lot with contours and so there's a lot more reliance on the contrast. That's one of the things I enjoy about Jasper over Banff bamf relies on the bunkering. It's obviously got a couple of moments that don't. Interestingly, Cauldron was without bunkers originally, which is fascinating, and the credit goes to Trent Jones for suggesting to put them in.

00:41:07
Speaker 3: Fascinating.

00:41:10
Speaker 2: Stan did it, but Trent suggested it on a report and it's not far removed from what the design is. But what I appreciate about Stan was, you know, he was I think he was flexible.

00:41:26
Speaker 3: I think the.

00:41:27
Speaker 2: Beauty of is like even he didn't go back to Jasper and say, well, I'm sorry, it's perfection in my first version, he went back and went, No, this could be way better. I can do something different, And then he went back again and he just continued to tinker away of a little bit more framework would make this whole better. You know, I can do something really elaborate here, And I think he just kept trying stuff. I think really World War two is where it just kind of ended to a degree. He did some interesting things afterwards, but I just think his probables with alcoholism were getting worse going into the war. And also there was only seven commissions after that, and you know, the money wasn't really around till the fifties, so I think he was kind of limited in what he was going to accomplish. But it's interesting. You go to some of the South American work and it's got some it's got some jazz too, Like I think some of the stuff he did at Gabby it was pretty cool.

00:42:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Later in his career, Stanley Thompson started working working a little more in South America, experimenting kind of in the same way in that region that Mackenzie did in the early nineteen thirties. But I want to bring this back to Jasper Park and back to the present day, So where is the course at now.

00:42:45
Speaker 2: After the fire, Glen Griffiths, the superintendent, was able to recover ten greens, so he actually stripped some of the other greens that ended up being resotted. What happened was a number of the greens got burnt thirteen. The green looked like plates, a turf look like that. It all looked like us and it just burnt and curled. There was a lot of intense fire right at that particular spot, and so what happened was resotted those greens, resotted some of the approaches that were lost where trees fell down. There was a lot of trees falling down and burning turf. So we resotted eight greens. We actually expanded three of them back to their original extents. It's twenty feet back to the left on seven. So first time anybody plays with that old pin position back, they're going to think that the pins actually cut off the green because it just doesn't look like there's any green over there. But the old grain used to go back into that corner. So we recaptured a couple of spots more of the kicker on eight and we'll do some of that work over time, so that was done. He saved the fairways, did a lot of overseating there in the middle of doing an irrigation system now and then the big thing is the trees. I would say there's fifty trees left on the golf course in total, and they were individual trees, and unfortunately, because of the way things work, those trees will put out essentially an indication that they're in stress, and beetles are drawn to stress. So essentially even those Douglas were expected to go. And so what we're doing is we're going to plant one hundred and fifty thousand seedlings mixed because the golf course actually breaks down into different forest structures, and then we'll replant with the idea. My mindset is to put it back the way it was when I showed up, when I was first day I was married. Actually we stayed in jasper So and I saw the golf firstam embarrassing or depending on your point of view. But my first day I actually went and played golf by myself and my wife wore a golf woildo button. It was she encouraged me.

00:45:04
Speaker 3: To do it.

00:45:06
Speaker 1: That's nice. She knew what she was in for it that way.

00:45:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.

00:45:10
Speaker 2: And I would like even the individual, the big Douglas fur that it's rooted around. So what we're going to try to do is get Parks Canada to let us collect pine cones and actually get a nursery to grow the pine trees. We need to grow them to about twelve to fifteen years old, otherwise they can be damaged by equipment. They've put the fence back up, so that should keep the elk out. If we didn't put the fence back up, the elk would actually eat all the seedlings. So the idea is that's the only way we're going to get the seedlings to come back up. So we're going to actually try to put it back to what it was. But my view is one hundred year of view. So I've told them I'll we'll put all this arrangement. I may see the bigger trees go in when I'm fading. Hopefully I'm still traveling and I could go see that, and then it's just as you need sort of fifty to one hundred years for that forest to return. But I would like it to be presented the way I saw it, the way some of the views we're going to leave open and all the turf issues that were created by overgrowth. We've actually planted rescue and we've stripped everything out so they can get in a mowe it, so they won't have those issues anymore. In the metal areas will remain metal areas like they used to be. They won't be grown in by aspens, so that'll all remain. But what I want to do is I want to present the property the way it was presented. Would I look at it as a restoration right down to the setting.

00:46:43
Speaker 1: A restoration of the course as it was when you first saw it.

00:46:46
Speaker 2: The timeline for the trees is actually the early photos.

00:46:50
Speaker 3: The nineteen twenties photos.

00:46:52
Speaker 1: So is there an opportunity here to do something good for the golf course? Obviously this is a sad set of circumstance answers for everybody, the lodge, the town, the golf course itself. But is there something that can come from this that might actually produce a better and more historically authentic golf course than existed before the fire.

00:47:16
Speaker 2: So you've got some of the views that were lost are back. You're not fighting with the part to try and remove trees, which they were very reluctant to do. We have like seven used to have views on the left looking down over ten and six. You've got those views back. They will stay. We're not putting any trees up in those areas. So any of the larger views that where the aspens had grown in, we've planted fascused and it's going to be fascus again and so you're going to get a little bit more open as it was when you look at the opening day photos.

00:47:47
Speaker 3: We're working to those where you've got the forest.

00:47:50
Speaker 2: We're going to establish the forest, which is particularly in the middle of the golf course there was actually a large forested area, and the superintendent's cottage and the maintenance building, we're all in there. And then the big one is trying to get the Douglas fur, which he worked around the individual furs tremendous tree. Is to try and restore those big trees that are actually interwoven into play so they come into play. So what we've done is we've made sure that none of the stuff that grew in can grow back. So we're turning to those old views and those old spaces around the green sites, and what we're trying to do is reaven trying to put the individuals back, and it's only on the first couple of holes and the essentially the last four or five holes where the individual trees actually stood out. What we'd like to do is we'd like to have those individual trees be developed.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: Now, what about the golf course features. What kind of work do you want to do with the grassing lines, the bunkers, the greens, anything along those lines. That's in your head right now.

00:48:51
Speaker 2: When we got together in the spring, one of the things I did was I pushed the fairways not out to the full wits, but six acres out. There's six acres more fairway than there was before the fire, and that's just to get some of the old fairway wits back.

00:49:07
Speaker 3: One of the biggest problems is to get all of the.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: Fairway wits back, you've actually got to take the cart pass system out, which I'm not seeing Fairmont sort of running to do because most rounds are resort rounds in their cart rounds. So we pushed everything out where we could. We've grassed everything out towards the bunkers where it should be. We've talked about doing some more grassing work later on.

00:49:34
Speaker 3: We've talked about some.

00:49:35
Speaker 2: Additional green expansion back out to the greens. The plan I gave them shows all the green expansion. Most of the bunkers are actually intact, but there are some bunkers that have been altered, and so they've actually got plans for how to alter individual bunkers to get and usually it's not the bunker, it's a missing face or a nose that used to extend down that's now been sort of cut off with it's just been trimmed and the shape has been lost. So it's more about lines, it's not about shaping. The only big thing is there used to be a very complex arched over bunker system between six and ten that got completely changed, and if we're going to do it, we would do everything else and then we would come to that and do that last. I got admit that's the one that makes me the most nervous of putting that back in because it's really elaborate. I've got great photos of it, but it is not what the ridge is there.

00:50:31
Speaker 3: But everything else has changed.

00:50:32
Speaker 1: So overall, this is a long term project that we're talking about gradually over the course of the coming years.

00:50:40
Speaker 2: So I would say fairways there may be another push, but i'd say, fairways are largely done.

00:50:46
Speaker 3: We've talked about a little.

00:50:47
Speaker 2: Bit of tea work just to address the fact that a couple of fives, in particular, there's abilities to go back on even higher spots to put some of the distances back in.

00:51:00
Speaker 3: I've played so short.

00:51:01
Speaker 2: To me, it plays as a long for but all you've got to do is go back onto the next ridge and essentially it would play the way it used to play for distances. So we've talked about a few teas to do a few things like that, but not really concentrated.

00:51:15
Speaker 3: We don't see that as a priority. But it's there.

00:51:18
Speaker 2: But even when we've talked about it, it's just like it's there, but it's never going to be in the initial conversation. So it was get fescue down to stabilize the property, and the fescues will remain, plant the trees to slowly develop the setting. Again, we pushed the fairways out. Teas have been recovered. Fairways have been recovered. We will do some more sotting to expand the greens. I don't think that's going to happen this year. I think that's still down the way. They still have to remove a lot of the trees that parks can want them to keep up, essentially as wildlife habitat. But the problem is they're all going to come down within twenty five years. So we've entered into a dialogue of we really would just speed that process up and plant and get the seedlings to come faster.

00:52:06
Speaker 1: When are players expected back on the course? Now, I apologize, I don't know if they were already back there this year.

00:52:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, so August first they reopened.

00:52:14
Speaker 1: Oh how about that?

00:52:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, they managed to get it all back up and play.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: That's sort of miraculous, Yes.

00:52:21
Speaker 3: I actually thought.

00:52:22
Speaker 2: And so I don't know if it's probably not common news, but I do know quietly.

00:52:28
Speaker 3: The director of golf and the superintendent.

00:52:32
Speaker 2: Played together because they're the ones who carried the weight to get this done. So they played together a quiet round in the afternoon, and then they had the opening and they had one of the firemen actually hit the the t shot, so one of the firemen from town and opened the golf course. And they even had a Stanley Thompson Society event there in September. So I provided a video interview for it, but I couldn't attend. I just was kind of stymied with the work that I had to do.

00:53:06
Speaker 1: Well, that's great, that's really good news. And the fact that there's more work to come at at Jasper Park to recover and improve the golf courses is tremendously heartening after a tough year.

00:53:20
Speaker 2: So my viewpoint, the golf course is fantastic to play as it is now. Seeing the burnt trees is an interesting dynamic, but is even when I did the walk around after three or four holes, you actually get really used.

00:53:33
Speaker 3: To it and you start to ignore it.

00:53:36
Speaker 2: But what you will see in that by next year is you'll just see some more turf improvement, even with the recovery with the fairways, so it'll probably be in pretty good shape. I mean, they had an invasive species in the fairways, so there are always small silver linings.

00:53:53
Speaker 3: We got the views back that we had lost.

00:53:55
Speaker 2: We got the greens that were always struggling now have full sunlight. And the problem they had with some of the turf grass actually most of it got burned away, so it's funny it didn't survive the burn very well. So we actually have a I think Glenn's fairways are actually in better shape, but I would say two to three years from now, you'll start to see actually the initial recovery, but the outside will now be fascued some really gorgeous rescues.

00:54:20
Speaker 3: We rescued.

00:54:22
Speaker 2: I think it was one hundred and thirty acres, so that's a lot of hydroceating. So I just think it's there, ready to be played and ready to be enjoyed. And I hope we can do a little bit of restorative work over the next ten years and then just let it go, let it evolve back to what it was.

00:54:44
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for coming on the podcast. Ian. It was great to hear the story about Jasper Park, and good luck with the project moving forward.

00:54:51
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.

00:54:52
Speaker 2: I'm glad you guys are really interested Jasper. I was asked about twenty years ago, where would you play your last round of golf if you determine that you can only play one more round, and my pick was Jasper Park. Then it's Jasper Park. Now it would be Jasper Park tomorrow morning. It is my single favorite place to play a round of golf.

00:55:15
Speaker 1: Thanks Ian. This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam. Thank you Will. If you've been enjoying Designing Golf, then I can just about guarantee that you would love what we're doing in Frida Egg Golf Club. That's Frida Egg Golf's membership. Go to the Frida Egg dot com slash membership to see more about it. One of the things that we deliver in Frida Egg Golf Club is regular in depth course profiles and regular updates on happenings in golf architecture. So if you're a designing golf listener you've been liking these episodes, then this will be your kind of stuff, so make sure to check that out. We also do fun stuff like a whole design contest where the winning hole will actually get built at a real golf course. That's ongoing right now. We've just gotten all of our submissions. There's some really cool stuff and we're about to go through the judging process for that. So if you participated in that, thank you very much and thanks for being part of Friday Golf Club. We're really enjoying it in there all right, Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.