A decade ago, a Fleet Street journalist spent time slumming as a sports columnist at a Toronto tabloid. Like erstwhile Brits working in the colonies, he had a knife-sharp view of our notorious ‘ah shucks, humility.’ His prose stabbed at the heart of our inferiority complex. ‘Winning awards made Canadians uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘The one-dimensional image of the gloating winner jars with the Canadian notion of what is right.’
In other words, Canadians couldn’t cut it in the hard-edged world of international sport. We were the only country to host a Winter (Calgary, 1988) and Summer Olympics (Montreal, 1976), and not win a gold medal.
After the blustery journo returned to Blighty, a group of hell-bent-for-change stakeholders proposed a very unCanadian plan to eliminate Olympic disappointments. ‘Own the Podium’ was hatched in 2004, and organizations – from skiing to curling – began an aggressive game plan. In a second try at the winter games (Vancouver 2010), we scored the highest medal count of any host country, 26, including a record 14 gold. This year in South Korea, we went one better: 29 medals, 11 gold, and third place overall.
Let’s double back to 2004 and focus on another game-changer. A clear-eyed 25-year-old Toronto businessman in golf tourism, flew to Halifax and made the arduous 3 ½ hour drive to the very outskirts of civilization – the tiny hamlet of Inverness on the briny coast of northwest Cape Breton. He was eyeing up a raw strip of land that sat atop a tapped-out coal mine and ran along the soaring cliffs overlooking the bluey Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Inverness’s 1,800 residents were also tapped out. There was little work there since the mines closed in the 1960s, and the land was despoiled by years of abuse. But who would kick-start this organic and economic re-do?
Enter the boy wonder, Ben Cowan-Dewar, a rising star in golf tourism. With an audacious three-year game plan, he cobbled together financing and land, and reimagined it all as a links-style course – unlike anything in golfdom. He later partnered with golf industry visionary, Mike Keiser, who transformed an underused parcel in southern Oregon into Bandon Dunes, one of the world’s best resorts.
Cowan-Dewar says those first years at Cabot Links were magical but anxious times, and it was during those rain-soaked drives from Halifax to Inverness that he asked himself what the hell he was doing. “In retrospect, it was a ridiculous notion,” he admits today.
But fueled to create something from nothing (Keiser’s mantra), the Cabot experiment succeeded – wildly, and unconventionally. Cabot Links, and its twin sister, Cabot Cliffs, are two much-esteemed courses. It’s a fully integrated resort featuring a 72-room lodge, golf villas, and about 700 summertime employees.
The Cabot miracle is a stirring tale of derring-do, and rehashing it here is severely limited by my 1,100-word count. Simply put, Cabot shouldn’t have succeeded, but did. It was built (in 2008) when the economic meltdown was eviscerating the golf world. But something ethereal was at work here, and Lady Luck sat on Cowan-Dewar’s shoulder.
Front page write-ups in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal during year one of operations drove rich American visitors to this enchanted kingdom to revel in a made-in-Canada ‘golfing experience.’ It didn’t hurt that images from this postcard-perfect venue were fed daily into a world-wide social media whirl. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram boosted future prospects.
Cowan-Dewar says if Cabot opened in less tech-savvy times, it might have arrived stillborn. “The internet is the great equalizer,” he adds.
The resort is now a multitudinous funfest, with biking, fishing, beaches, whale-watching, and road trips along the world-famous Cabot Trail. Although he’s warmly satisfied with this creation, and still has the energy and enthusiasm to continue the Toronto-Halifax-Inverness shuttle, Cowan-Dewar is eager to play a bigger role in unveiling Canada’s full golfing menu to hungry world markets.
The 39-year-old father of three also chairs Destination Canada, a Crown corporation that promotes tourism in 10 countries. Its 2017 Annual Report (entitled ‘Breaking Through’) says $20 billion in tourism dollars poured across our borders, some in response to our 150th celebration.
Golf tourism plumped up those numbers, too, even if it wasn’t parsed out from the total. If it’s a growing niche within the tourism industry, those numbers need to be quantified. It’s something Destination Canada promises to do.
Yes, there’s room for improvement. But marketing to inbound visitors is piecemeal at best, and, at its worst, negligent.
There are 169 golf resorts (seven per cent of total supply) in Canada, a small segment, but a significant contributor, according to a Golf Facilities Report. While golf is marketed regionally – think PEI or the Rocky Mountain consortium – a country-wide push is de rigueur around the world – think Brand USA, the equivalent of Destination Canada.
The International Association of Golf Tour Operators comprises 2,498 accredited golf tour operators, airlines, tourist boards, receptive operators, airlines, hotels, golf resorts, approved media and business partners in 98 countries. IAGTO’s operators control over 87 per cent of golf holiday packages sold worldwide and churn out about €2.1 billion per year.
At press time, IAGTO’s North American Convention, set for June 24 -27 in Bend, Oregon, shows only seven Canadian suppliers registered, two from the East Coast, and five from BC. That means none from Ontario, or Alberta, and no representation from Golf Canada or Destination Canada.
While other countries (and industry stakeholders) snap up IAGTO memberships or play host to its annual convention (like the recent one in the Philippines), is Canada letting potential millions in inbound revenue slip through our fingers?
Golf tourism is too competitive to be singly or regionally focused. About $20 billion in tourism money leaves the U.S. annually, a large portion of it is allocated to golf tourism. But at the granddaddy of all golf shows, the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Canada is a no-show in the golf destinations’ section.
Cowan-Dewar says Destination Canada has made a solid commitment to growing golf within and outside the country, but admits it has to do more. “We have to focus better on traveller research,” he notes.
If one man is perfectly poised to drive that charge, it’s Cowan-Dewar. Cabot Links looked to be stymied by the polemics, and built when the golf world was on financial fumes.
It’s heartening to know the game’s guidance system is in the hands of creators and capitalists like Ben Cowan-Dewar. It took an Olympian effort to implement our Own The Podium. We’re now a world athletic power. Why can’t we do the same in golf?
“We have a new and positive golf story to tell,” says Cowan-Dewar.
Perhaps the new chapter began when a 25-year-old disembarked from his rental car in Inverness and saw something there that no one else could see. Was it the future of the game?
