Times were changin’ in the ‘60s
Part 2 of a 2-part excerpt from the new book Peterborough’s Golf Stary ... and More, by Ed Arnold and Roger Self
The 1960s introduced space flight, mass communications, culture, music, The Beatles and new attitudes of people living in the free world.
Life as our parents had known it, would never be the same.
Canada’s Bill of Rights was approved and Canadian natives finally got the right to vote.
A young John F. Kennedy became U.S. president, while 88 per cent of homes in North America now had television sets. Black America was demonstrating in the streets while white schools began admitting black students, some very reluctantly.
Changes were coming faster than the colour of the seasons’ leaves.
Peterborough’s workforce was an incredible 60 per cent industrial and had the highest per capita manufacturer workers in North America. The city’s north end was being developed with residential subdivisions going up north of Parkhill Road.
A sure sign of change was the city and area voting in its first socialist, electing New Democrat Walter Pitman as MPP.
Sunday shopping was turned down and Sunday bowling was still against the law.
Styles, clothing, haircuts, were all changing. Golf was no different. While summer children were jumping into Little Lake at Point St.
Charles, the same lake that Canada Packers had dumped carcasses into, and enjoying the Lions Pool in East City, some were at Kawartha and Peterborough caddying, golfing or shagging balls.
The PGCC Invitational had 244 golfers in it that Nick Weslock won and caddies were still in demand.
The new club groundskeeper was Bill Bowen, a marvelous golfer who helped many of the young golfers improve their games. He would eventually win the tournament with an amazing 68 and jokingly thank “the excellent shape of the course” for his victory.
He started working there in 1960, the same year the club opened its first driving range where members could hit their golf balls to the north, but had to shag them or pay a young person to chase them down and return them inside the golfer’s shag bag.
The Ontario Ladies Golf Championship was held at PGCC thanks to the new clubhouse attraction and beautiful course. Future renowned international local architect Eberhard Zeidler had started designing the new clubhouse in 1958 moving the curling rink to the clubhouse, as the architect explained, so the club could use it year round.
By 1959, when the PGCC clubhouse was complete, its dining room got the club’s first liquor licence so was ready for the ladies provincial championship.
Zeidler had married Robert Abbott’s daughter, Jane, and had a firm in downtown George Street but also in Toronto. Decades later, in his autobiographical book, he wrote about the challenge of building this clubhouse so it would be good for golf in the summer and curling in the winter.
“There was a stringent budget, and brick and wood were the most inexpensive materials that I could use. We lifted the entrance to the second floor, which was possible due to the contours of the site. When you arrived and left your car, you had to take a few steps up to the main entrance. The main entrance gave a view right through the building to the golf course on the opposite side.”
During the golf season curtains were drawn over the large windows looking down into the curling rink because it was used as a golf cart storage area.
Photographs of that era clearly show a few pushcarts being used at the club in the early 1960s.
Even though the course was beside the Trent Canal the lack of water always seemed to be an issue. A new aluminum piping system was installed at PGCC in 1965 for the eighth, ninth and back nine holes.
There were no ponds on the course but one was placed in front of No. 12 that attracted some muskrats that red foxes eventually eliminated.
The city annexed some of the land north of Armour and Parkhill roads in 1966 for Trent University finally bringing the course inside the city limits.
While PGCC had changed in the sixties the city’s council also ended a long reign of males only when Alene Holt got elected to council breaking more than 60 years of male-only council members. During her term she was also appointed mayor to finish the term of the elected mayor, the PGCC’s Stan McBride, who became the county’s sheriff.
As young folk singer Bob Dylan sang, “the times they were a changin’.’’
Bob Jamieson and John Kindred would be a big part of the golf change.