Alexander Dennistoun, founder of the Royal Montreal Golf Club
Alexander Dennistoun, founder of the Royal Montreal Golf Club, born in Dumbarton, Scotland in 1821, came to Canada as a young man and to Montreal about 1860. In 1873 he was the club’s first President and Captain. He died in Edinburgh in 1895.
In 1992 James A. Barclay published Alex Dennistoun: Golf in Canada, a History. In it he tells this story about Dennistoun:
“…he moved to Montreal in 1861. Five years later, he married a daughter of John Redpath of the Redpath Sugar Refinery.
“Over the next thirty years, Alex Dennistoun and his wife appear to have spent as much time in Scotland as in Canada. and it was during one of those visits home that he had some success in competitive golf. He played not only at St. Andrews and Musselburgh, but also at Royal Liverpool GC. At Liverpool, he won the Silver Cross for second-best scratch score in the spring competition of 1870. A year later he tied for the Gold Medal. So it was as an accomplished golfer-and no doubt an enthusiastic one-that he returned to Canada in 1872 with his wife, their first visit in years, and took a home on McTavish street, within walking distance of the new Mount Royal Park.
It is safe to say that a golfer is never keener to play than when he has just won a tournament, and never more frustrated than when he faces the future in a country without a golf course. The incentive for Dennistoun to form a golf club in Montreal is not hard to find.”
