Highlands Links

About The Society and What You Can do to Help:

If you are reading this there is a good chance that you too share our interest and passion for the Highlands Links experience. The Highlands Links Stanley Thompson Historical Society began as an idea during a golf outing at Highlands Links in the fall of 2007. A group of good friends started asking what if we could do something that would enhance Highlands Links as one of the best golfing experiences in the world - what if we could give something back to the course and Ingonich community. After some discussion we decided to form a group with the goal of raising funds for the creation of a monument. The vision was a monument that would recognize the course designer, the legendary Stanley Thompson and the Ingonish community which provided the land and labour for the creation of the course.
With this in mind, we need your help in raising the funds necessary for the creation of the monument pictured on the home page of this site. The Highlands Links/Stanley Thompson Historical Society is an officially recognized charitable organization established for the purpose of raising the necessary funds to be used for the creation of a monument that will be given to Parks Canada for prominate placement on the grounds of the Highlands Links Golf Course. The societies members are all volunteers and receive no compensation. All monies collected go towards the creation of the monument. Our charitable designation allows us to accept contributions and provide tax receipts to those who make a contribution. Each contributor will be recognized on one of the plaques that form part of the monument as well as on a special wall hanging that will be located prominently in the Highlands Links Club House. If you would like to be part of this initative please contact any of our members via the "Contact" link on our home page.

Greg McMullin
Born in Cape Breton Greg's family roots date back to the early 1800's on the island. Greg currently resides in Brampton, Ontario with his family and is an avid golfer who visits Cape Breton annually to visit family and play some rounds at Highlands Links. Greg is a partner at BGGM Inc. a software development firm and is an advisor to HrCentral.ca Inc. located in Bedford, NS.

Bill Murphy
Bill is a fellow Cape Bretoner and property owner in Ingonish. Known among his friends as the best 20+ handicap to ever play the game Bills favorite golf tip is "play the shot that makes the next shot easy." Bill currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia. Bill is President of Cossette Atlantic the regions largest advertising agency. Bill and his family live in Hubley just outside Halifax.

Peter Malloy
Born in Cape Breton, Peter and his wife Corinne are avid golfers who frequent Highlands Links throughout the golfing season. Peter and Corinne plan to build a summer residence on their land in Ingonish Ferry in the near future. Peter's background is in Accounting and Finance. He resides in Halifax and is an Investment Advisor with CIBC Wood Gundy. His community involvement, aside from FOST, centres on the Pier 21 Historical Society where he is both Director and Treasurer.

Mike Dunphy
Mike is also an avid golfer who is well known in Nova Scotia sports circles from his amateur hockey days. Mike's family is well known within the Ingonish community as his family roots date back over 100 years in the area. Mike resides with his family in Halifax, where he is a partner with the law firm of Cox & Palmer.

Ken Donovan
A native of Ingonish, Ken Donovan is an historian with Parks Canada and teaches history at Cape Breton University. Ken is an active volunteer with the Old Sydney Society and is a board member of the Jost House Museum.
Widely published in social and cultural history, he is also the historian for Cape Breton Highlands Links.

Geoffrey Cornish
Mr. Cornish is a protege of Stanley Thompson and has a long and distinguished career as a golf course architect. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba Mr. Cornish began his career working for Stanley Thompson in 1935 and was the Construction Supervisor for Highlands Links during its construction in 1938 and 1939. He has written or co-authored 5 books on golf including what is considered by many to be a seminal work "The Golf Course" which he co-wrote with Ron Whitten and published in 1991. Mr. Cornish is a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and a past President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

The following article was written by Lorne Rubenstein and appeared in the Globe and Mail August 5, 2004

Cornish still a vital part of the game

One of golf's most respected course architects will turn 90 tomorrow, and the distressing truth is that so few people are aware of his contributions. This remarkable gentleman, Geoffrey Cornish, was born in Winnipeg, studied at the University of British Columbia and the University of Massachusetts, worked with the famous architect Stanley Thompson on some of Canada's classic courses and is just about the most decent person anybody could hope to meet.

"I don't know how you could meet a finer person," Brian Silva, Cornish's associate in a course design firm with offices in Whitinsville, Mass., and Uxbridge, Mass., said yesterday while on his way to the airport in Pittsburgh and then home. "Nobody has worked more selflessly for the game."

Cornish lives in Amherst, Mass., and maintains an active role with Silva and Mark Mungeam, gentlemen and course architecture scholars in their own right.

The firm of Cornish, Silva & Mungeam is busy in New England and elsewhere.

That's why Silva was in the hills of western Pennsylvania yesterday.

Cornish, meanwhile, was having a typical day. He walked. And he walked.

Cornish often walks kilometres with a half-dozen dogs or so that he picks up near his home. His nephew Brian, a real-estate lawyer in Montreal, said yesterday that his uncle walks up to 25 kilometres a day with the dogs.

"I'm in great shape," Cornish said from his home. "I ran a mile every day from the time I got out of the [Canadian] army in 1945 until recently. But I still get out and walk at home or when I'm out at courses. I think that constant walking is the answer for a long life."

Constant enthusiasm for one's work, and an interest in the world around and other people, can't hurt either. Cornish is always more interested in asking about somebody else than answering questions about himself.

"He'll have met you and talked to you for 30 seconds, but he won't let you interview him because he wants to know about you," Silva said. "Then you'll get a four-page letter from him two days later."

If Cornish did talk more about himself, he'd be more widely known. He's accomplished so much. Cornish has taught at the University of Massachusetts and at Harvard. He crafted an elegant foreword to Jim Barclay's biography about Thompson, called The Toronto Terror. And he co-wrote The Architects of Golf with Golf Digest's architecture editor, Ron Whitten. This standard reference is full of information and insightful essays.

"I remember talking to the publisher about the first edition of the book," Cornish recalled. "He thought it would have the interest of a telephone book."

"I still refer to it as the book," Silva said. "I don't think the plethora of architecture books since then would have come out had it not been done. And you know, Mr. Cornish isn't one of those architects who's asked for seven-figure fees, there's no self-promoting ego, no saying that he spent $30-million on a course. The result is that so many of his contributions are unknown."

One can go back to 1935 at the beautiful Thompson-designed Capilano course in West Vancouver, where Cornish evaluated soils after graduating in agronomy from UBC. Cornish was the greenkeeper at St. Charles in Winnipeg.

Cornish also worked on Thompson's Highlands Links in Cape Breton in Nova Scotia with Robbie Robinson, who later became a well-known architect. Robinson was the construction superintendent when the Highlands Links was built in the late 1930s.

Robinson went on to supervise the building of the Anne of Green Gables course in Prine Edward Island after a year at the Highlands, so Cornish took over the lead role. He eventually turned to full-time design work in 1952 after serving in the army and working for Thompson and Lawrence Dickinson, a maverick turf-grass scientist at the University of Massachusetts.

Cornish was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1996. By then, he'd worked with Toronto-born architect William Robinson on many courses, including York Downs in Unionville, Ont. Legendary Canadian amateur Marlene Streit is a member at York Downs. To chat with Cornish is to appreciate him not only as an architect and educator, but also as a golf historian. He is a significant part of golf history.

"I don't know how I'd have come to appreciate the history of the game without him," Silva said. "I don't like to use the term for a man of his advanced age, but he's a dying breed. He's a unique man."

He is that. Cornish has been a vital part of the game for 70 years. At 90, his vitality remains, and people who know golf might celebrate his vital contributions and offer a toast to him on his birthday.