Canada's Jasper National Park was created in 1907, one of Canada's oldest and largest parks it covers an area of more than 1000 square miles and has been drawing tourists and outdoor enthusiasts ever since. The Town of Jasper was seen as an island of civilization in this vast wilderness.

One of the great civilized pleasures offered in the park today is a round of golf at The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Stanley Thompson designed golf course. Considered by many to be Thompson's "Masterpiece", with it's tranquil fairways progressing along what seems to be the golfer's private pathway through the forest, it remains to this day the first and only golf course ever built within the park.  

What is fun to note however, is that Thompson's was not the only or first "golfing links" to have ever been conceived or laid out a in Jasper Park. 

At the time of Jasper becoming a Canadian National Park, the role of Superintendent was assigned to South African War hero Lieutenant Colonel Maynard Rogers.  Although Colonel Rogers was no stranger to the wilderness, having spent a good deal of life dedicated to its conservation and protection, he was not quite ready for Jasper. 

Describing it as "God's own handiwork", he realized he was engulfed by "nature in her grandest and most majestic garb."

During the South African War Colonel Rogers and had met and become close friends with the greatest of all British novelists, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Knowing the Sir Arthur had spoken often about creating a Canadian masterpiece, Rogers extended an invite to Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle to come by for a visit thinking that Jasper's "primeval mountains, forests and lakes" would inspire the Doyle's fertile mind. 

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
With engineer's rod in hand laying out the golf course in Jasper Park,
Canada's most northern game preserve

“I shall hear the roar of rivers where
the rapids foam and tear,

I shall smell the virgin upland with its
balsam-laden air,

And shall dream that I am riding down the
winding woody vale,

With the packer and the packhorse
on the Athabasca Trail.”

If you have ever been to Jasper then you know it sits in a huge beautiful valley surrounded with stunning mountain peaks that seem to touch the sky. Each one a perfect frame for a golf hole, and I'm sure this was not missed on Doyle and Rogers. 

Now Rogers being charged with building this "pleasure and resting ground for the nations of the world", thought having his friend the world renowned Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, design and layout a golf course would surely place Jasper very quickly in on the list the top tourist destinations for the world's privileged to visit. 

So the design and layout began, and quite frankly I can not imagine how much fun these two guys must have had or the celebration that followed when Doyle struck the first shot, sending his golf ball into the forest where their first hole was to me. Nor can I imagine what the golf course would have looked or played like. Or how about the names of the holes..."The Hole of the Baskervilles", The Exhumed Bunker" or even "The Adventure of the Dancing Putter"

During his visit to Canada, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited 
Jasper Park in Northern Alberta and while there laid out
 a golf course. The photograph shows Sir Arthur, the fourth
 from the left, at luncheon, in one of the shelter houses of the Park