Local Club Archives - Larrimac Golf & Tennis Club
From Pasture To Fairway 1924-1937
Original document 6.2 MB

To the present members I would say:
“Enjoy to the full the blessing of that little golf course which is yours, in that lovely setting of the old Gatineau, and once in a while give a kindly thought to the old timers who made it possible”
Larry McGooey, Co-Founder
The Larrimac story seems to me an encouraging record of unselfish cooperation in developing a golf course that later generations could enjoy.
James McCook.
These Gatineau Hills
Some sing their praise of winter's snow,
Of joys which only skiers know,
When cold and ice hold firm domain,
O'r vale and stream, o'r field and plain.
Or springtime with ise flush of green,
With promise of a fairer scene,
When Nature with rare skill reveals
How she can paint hillsides and fields
I know a spot, when summer’s heat.
Drives me to seek a cool retreat,
Beside a garden ringed with pine,
I revel in the summertime.
But better far, give me the links
That nestle by the river brinks,
The rolling slopes of Larrimac
Which test the knowing golfer’s knack.
When autumn decks the hills around,
A grander sight can scarce be found,
If you should travel far and wide
And take the whole world in your stride.
And if perchance I take a notion
To cross a continent or ocean,
I'll sometimes turn the pages back
And view the hills of: Larrimac.
D. Westwood.
34 Second Ave.,
Ottawa.
October 16, 1941.

David Westwood, the "Club Poet", was a Scotsman who would not play golf on Sunday, which meant that, as a civil servant, he could only play on Saturday afternoons and in the evenings. He, like other members, gave ceaselessly of his time in improvement and maintenance of the course.
From The Evening Citizen, July 19, 1945
The Gatineau Train
An interpolated Geography lesson by Austin F. Cross
Now I know why I have lived so long. I had to ride the Gatineau train before I moved on to some other sphere, hot or heavenly. So you find me down at the depot with the Bertrand boys, trying to mill my way through the mob to catch the Gatineau local No. 535. Earlier, I had baffled Gerry Dewan at Leo Sauve’s parlors when I came in and got a ticket, not for California, not for New Orleans, and not for Vancouver, but Burnet. My transaction flustered the usually imperturbable, case-hardened Mr. Dewan so much that he actually had to go and look up the fare. Then he wrote me an elaborate receipt for forty five cents (45c), and sat down to rest a minute before serving the next client.
Down at the station there had been a little confusion, and the passengers had to be loaded in two phases. There were two classes of patron, roughly speaking, and when you speak of the Gatineau train, you speak roughly. There were what seemed like a thousand commuters, cinder-scarred veterans of the hour-long 21.4 mile trip up to Wakefield, and there are 27 other forlorn souls going all the way to the end of the line at Maniwaki, and who were wandering bewilderedly through the coaches, looking for a place to put their wherewithall.
So there were priests and fresh-air pilgrims and shoppers and high-school girls and brass-hats and one-stripe probationary second lieutenants and tired civil servants. There was also one illustrial grauate of Science '23, Vic Minnes. Queen's men always get places. As an Arts' 23 man, Queen's University, I suppose I should have given a Science man my seat, but I didn’t, on account of my age. Later, however, I went out to the back platform, after squatting from Ottawa to Ironside beside a man who had the window seat. He ignored the scenery, so absorbing did The Evening Citizen prove. Getting tired of trying to crane round his paper to see out, I sought the observation platform of car 2006, and there remained.
This-Gatineau train is really something. The people pile on, and finally the aisles are half full. Then old 2509 starts up like an antelope, leaps across the river, and stops at Hull. There we take on more cash customers, and the train with a snort of defiance, makes a quick spurt to try to make the big hill. Last Saturday, they tell me, she had to take a second run at it, after backing down again.
Only after the train leaves Hull do they even attempt to collect tickets. Then the brakeman came through calling, “Ironside tickets please.” The catch is, that if you don’t show your ticket, you might go by your station, since Ironside is a flag stop.
What impressed me most on this hilarious run was how quickly you slough off the city, and how quickly you could pick up the country. And we began the long, sinuous travel up Chelsea hill. I couldn't help noticing that for all you could tell, you might be 100 miles from Ottawa, and yet our town was just down the track four miles. Indeed, when I sat beside the open window, and stood on the open platform, I was transplanted to northern Ontario. Once more I was on one of the old harvester trains, with their long string of coaches, and their slow motion, huffing and puffing up the grade going into Cartier, or headed west from Nicholson, on the main line. When I saw those blackberry blossoms, when I glimpsed those rocks and felt that sway, I was carried back to the old days when I rode to Winnipeg the hard way, in a colonist car. This then, was the charm of the Gatineau, that you could shake off the torpor of mid-summer Ottawa, and lift up your eyes, via the C.P.R. unto the hills, whence comes a little eventide salvation.
So the shuffling an the stumbling and the standing is all worth it, if at the end of 30, 40, or 50 minutes, comes the dancing sunlight, the marvellous ozone, and the well-cooked dinner. As for the air, I can testify that it is good, for I can fall asleep like a man drugged, after a couple of hours in those airconditioned hills.
I thought we'd drop off a lot of people at Chelsea, but the debarking customenrs were few. The standees looked wistfully around, saw no vacancies, and kept standing.
Astouning too is the river life. I had always judged the Gatineau territory from the highway. (Remember this was my first trip, and although I had ridden the Simplon Orient Express to Turkey, the White Pass and Yukon in Alaska, and a brace of lines in Mexico, this was my first weekday run up the Gatineau.) So there were little spots like Tenega and Glen Eagle, where dozens of people were met by dozens of women folk. Kirk's Ferry, I realized, would be a traffic center, but again I was not prepared for the bustle at Larrimac.




Excerpts from Larry McCooey's Letter to J.M.Manson, January, 1963.
As a sort of prologue to the history of Larrimac, I believe it would be of no little interest to describe, as well as I can remember, the Gatineau as I first saw it some forty years ago.
To go “up the Gatineau" in those Model T days one had the choice of a very rough motoring journey on a gravelly stoney road which began at the junction of Hull and Wrightville, or to make the journey by train, considered much the preferred way then and for some years afterward.
The Gatineau seemed more beautiful in those days, and regarded as most fortunate were the comparative few, mostly civil servants, who had discovered this treasure existing but a few miles from Ottawa. They brought in most of their foodstuffs and other items from Ottawa, pumped and carried their water, often a good distance, and happily put up with the inconvenience of outdoor plumbing, but mostly they enjoyed to the full the utter tranquility and beauty of those summer days and nights of the early 1920's.
Larrimac, or Lacharite, as it was known in those days, was a CPR flagstop. Although mispelled, the name Lacharite was derived from that of a family of old-time settlers by the name of Lacharity, and the last of that family to own the surrounding acres was Owen, a bachelor farmer about fifty when I first met him. The land which is now the golf course, and the many acres flooded in 1926 were Owen's and he loved every inch of this land which his father and grandfather before him had cleared. The farm buildings comprised the old homestead, then over 100 years old, three large barns, and a dwelling of box-like construction, plain but very practical. Very happy was Owen with his lot, but in the Gatineau Power Company expropriations stampede, about 1924-25 poor Owen sold out his birthright for $6000 and settled in Ottawa. I met Owen one bitter winter afternoon in the early 1930's on Laurier Avenue Bridge. He was carrying a snow shovel on one shoulder, and with a wry smile he told me that he had to shovel snow for a living for very little of the $6000 was left due to bad investments. He was knocked down by a car and killed a few months later.
I visited Lacharite (Larrimac) for the first time on my return from overseas in 1919. There were about four cottages in the area, three of which were for rent and one owned and lived in by my first wife’ s mother, and subsequently by the Hazelgroves. I was married in 1921, and in June 1922 took up summer residence in the little cottage built for me on the hilltop. This I latterly sold to the Chowne. Built a few months later was the old Anson Green Cottage, originally owned by the Norman Allens.
I discovered the wonderful rolling pasture land of Owen Lachearity late in the summer of 1922. It so reminded me of certain features of a U.K. course on which I had played as a small lad that I resolved then and there to lay out a "course" for my own pleasure in the following year. It could be truthfully said that the first golf ball ever hit over the present site was in May, 1923.




I think it was in early July, 1924, that three people came over the hill from Kirk's Ferry direction and surprised me while I was happily swatting balls around my little course. They were Phil and Eta Sherrin and Bunty Carver. It was my first meeting with these very wonderful people, and now, locking back, it seems that this meeting just had to be, for because of it Larrimac was born, and born with that utterly mad enthusiasm that only golfers know.




I am afraid that there exists no record of "Board" meetings in those days, or of brilliantly executed plans for development. But soon were mustered about a dozen or so interested and fun-loving cottage residents in the general area of Kirk's Ferry and Lacharite, and it was decreed that a small club of sorts should be established ans called Larrimac after the founder. The membership fee should be $5.00, Owen Lacharity should be paid $10.00 a year rental for the use of his land, all suitable mechanical equipment owned by members should be made use of for initial greenskeeping, poles and flags should be made up and score cards printed which were to show by map the tees and holes laid out by the founder.
Before the summer of 1924 had ended the little club had become firmly eatablichea. Much hard work had been done, especially by the four charter members: the founder Larry McCooey, Phil Sherrin, Harry Periera, and Arthur Elias. Owen lacherity's sheep helped considerably in cutting the "fairways". There was of course no clubhouse, but this can be said, that there was no happier group anywhere than these oldtimers who, with golfing equipment mostly relic of the 1900's bashed golf balls over the old Larrimac.







Early in 1926 was the expropriation of Owen Lacharity's farm and pasture lands by the Gatineau Power Co. Arrangements were made between the club and the company for the continued rental of the land for golf purposes. From the Company was obtained the expropriated cottage of the Lambe family. This, when moved, became the first clubhouse and the scene of many happy times. With about thirty-five or forty members at this time the added finances permitted the acquisition of a horse drawn mower for the fairways and the employment of Gordon Wilson as greenskeeper.


Among the other things decided upon for 1925 was the laying out of an experimental 18-hole course! That the actual golfing area was only enough to meet the needs of a few holes didn't matter. So it was that, in the early summer of 1925, larrimac had an 18 hole course!!! It was completely daffy, like the founder who conceived it. It went over rocks and through trees, with the 18th tee on the site of the old Minnes cottage, and the 18th green on the site of the old Deruchie cottage. One had to be balmy to play the course, but it was fun while it lasted. Very soon the old course of nine holes was reverted to.


Club competitions were initiated for the first time in 1925 and the first Club Championship held. I have in my possession the Club Championship "Trophy" of 1925, a little silver cup the size of an egg cup, the very first trophy, and, at that time, all our meagre funds would permit buying. I hope to have certain repairs made to it, and, if acceptable to the club I will send it along for the Club "Museum".
In a pre-season meeting in 1927 Larrimac got organized for the first time on something approaching an official basis. An ol original and much loved member, Fred Burpee, was elected president, other officials elected and committees formed. The feeling was that Larrimac was on the way. Additional land and a much lengthened course was taken into play for the first time. This was before the development of the holes across the highway. They came into being eight years later bringing into play the complete course as it stands now.
___________________________________

On August 23, 1970, Larry MeCooey, 73, the founder of the Larrimac Golf Club, named in his honour, visited the club and went around 18 holes in 79 without any evidence of fatigue. A colonel in the second world war, McCoooey said he started visiting the Gatineau area just after the first world war.

To the present members I would say:
Enjoy te the full the blessing of that little golf course which is yours, in that lovely setting of the old Gatineau, and once in a while give a kindly thought to the oldtimers who made it possible.
---Larry McCooey,
January 28, 1963.
McCOOEY, Lawrence E. (Larry)
Lieutenant Colonel Retired
Suddenly at his home 264 View Royal Ave., Victoria, Saturday, October 20, 1973, beloved husband of Noreen Battle; dear father of Mrs. Emil WegWithc (Susan), Kate and Mary Ann, at home; Brian, Timothy and Paddy, Victoria; Derek, Abbotsford; Owen and Michael, Vancouver; sister Mrs. Percy Collins, (Cicely) Ottawa; 12 grandchildren. Funeral in Victoria.
R213R
Larrimac’s founder dies
Fifty years ago in what what old-timers recall as a golden age in the Gatineaus, Larry McCooey, a permanent army soldier started to knock a golf ball around farm fields near his summer cottage. Suddenly other cottagers wanted to do the same and a golf club was born ,named Larrimac in his honor.
The club continues ... and the traffic along the highway near it has grown louder year by year. When he visited the course a few months ago, Lt.-Col McCooey entertained newer members with recollections of the earliest days when the daily train, morning and evening, was the Gatineau highway to Ottawa and everyone used it all summer. A few days ago (Oct. 29), a golfer to the last, Larry McCooey died in Victoria, B.C. and those that remember him remember happy holidays long ago.
- reprinted from the Ottawa Journal


Gordon Wilson, who died in June, 1961, was the counsellor and friend of cottagers in the Kirk's Ferry area, and a guiding figure in the development and preservation of the Larrimac Golf Course. He was a builder and craftsman who could make do with very little equipment, and he transmitted to the summer residents some of his affection for the community he knew so well, its people, its soil, and its story. In the days of "operation on a shoestring" the club was happy to have Mr. Wilson use two horses for club work in the summer and for anything he wanted in the winter. When one of the horses died Mr. Wilson insisted that it was his horse and not the club's horse that had expired.


Mr. & Mrs. Philip Sherrin
Mr. & Mrs. Arthur Joannes
Major & Mrs. Fred Burpee
Mr & Mrs. Thos. Lewson
Miss May Lyons
Mrs. Ince
Larry McGooey
Arthur Elias
Miss Florence Brown
Mr. & Mrs. Dickson
Miss Price
Miss Mildred Carver
Harry Pereira
Miss Victory Bond
Miss Mary Bond
Miss Herrick


The first Larrimac course
1924----1927




Players were charmed, along with cottagers, when a farmer across the river went on periodic bouts and played a mouthorgan and sang melodiously all day within easy earshot of the club members as they played.


The Gatineau River in those days was shallow and rocky. One year, during a very dry spell, people could cross the river on foot near Lacharity's, stepping from rock to rock.




When a ball is driven out of bounds from the tee, the player tees his ball and plays his second stroke. If driven out of bounds on any other shot, he drops the ball as near as possible from where the shot was played, loosing distance.
The boundary lines are the fence lines to the left of the fairway as far as the gate on No. 1, and those at the back of No. 3 and No. 4 greens.




Since the only road was down by the river, the course was able to extend much further to the west. Probabbly the 5th tee was on the other side of the present # 11 highway.


On Sundays, Roman Catholic cottagers were collected in a one-horse char-a-banc affair that trundled slowly up the gravel road, picked up five or six of them, and took them at a decorous pace to the Tenaga cut-off to Old Chelsea where the church was. This slow procees would take most of the day, and all enjoyed it in a leisurely fashion.






At one time there was a bull enclosed in an area on the course. Players who were unfortunate enough to play into the bull pen were allowed a free lift back into the safe area--bull willing, of course!













When the level of the river was raised in 1927 the old road was flooded, and it was necessary for the government te build a new road. This new road cut off part of the original course, passing through the Punchbowl, over the 8th green and the 4th tee. Consequently the club rented other land to replace this area and also to extend the course.






The Second Larrimac Course 1928----1937
The expropriated Lambe Cottage was obtained from the Gatineau Power Company, moved to a position near the present 5th tee, and established as the clubhouse.

















Sports Day at Larrimac, 1941
Organized by a committee composed of Group Captain H. Edwards, L. McCooey, Brigadeer General D. Ormond, Air Commodore L.S. Breadner, R.W. Cautley, H. Anson Green, C.C. Graham and Philip Sherrin, a successful acquatic and field sports day was held during the holiday-weekend for the children of the Summer residents in the Larrimac district. The day's program consisted of a mixed baseball game and field sports in the morning and aquatic sports in the afternoon, followed by presentation of prizes at the Larrimac Golf Club clubhouse. A gaily decorated boat parade was staged in the evening as a finale to the day's proceedings.
Winners of the various events were as follows:
Foot races, junior girls: Ann Selwin; boys: Derek McCooey; intermediate, girls: Allison Bradley; boys: Hugh Woodside; seniors, girls, Hope Burland; boys: Wm. Chipman.
Aquatic: junior swim, girls: Ann Selwyn; boys: Tommy Green; junior diving, girls: Ann Selwyn; boys: Derek McCooey; junior boat race, girls: Joan Burt and Ann Selwyn; boys: Hugh and Brian Woodside.
Intermediate: swim, girls: Frances Powell; boys: David Morgan; intermediate, diving, girls: Fearn Lawson; boys: Brian Woodside; intermediate, canoe singles, girls: Ann Selwyn; boys: Harry Green; intermediate, canoe doubles, Frances Powell and Joyce Woodside; boys: Brian McCooey and Harry Green.
Senior, swim, girls: Betty Walker; boys: Don Breadner; senior diving, girls: Doris Breadner; senior diving, girls: Doris Breadner; boys: Dave Powell; senior canoe singles, girls: Nancy Lawson; boys: Peter Veits; senior canoe doubles, girls: Peg Gisborne and Hope Burland; boys: Hugh Baker and Peter Veits
Larrimac Club News, 1943
The annual distribution of prizes at the Lrrimac Golf Club was held in the clubhouse on Labour Day, with almost 130 members and friends attending. The president, General Ormond, and the directors were present.
In the club championship, the Gatineau Power Trophy was won by V. Minnis: Mrs. E. J. Ashton won the Ladies Shield. Stuart Jennis was the winner of the Cherie Jones Trophy, and the boy's handicap for the Read Cup fell to Robert Jennis. In the girls' match Miss. Caroline Gisborne won the F.A. Brown Trophy. Other prizes for varuous club matches took the form of War Savings Certificates.
A Red Cross tournament was held at the request of the Royal Canadian Golf Association and the prie for this event was won by D. Westwood.
The house committee, under the chairmanship of Mrs. P. Sherrin, provided supper.
Larrimas Golfers Plan Clubhouse; Dr. Manson President, 1946
Plans were made at the annual meeting of the Larrimac Golf Club last night at the Chateau Laurier to build a new club house and improve the course. The executive was instructed to consider plans for a new club as soon as material is available and to report back to the club members next July.
A most successful season was reported for 1945 with a report on the year's operation, which has about 170 playing members.
Officers were elected (the remaining part of the paragraph is illegible).
The Third Larrimac Course
1938 ----1948














When the new clubhouse was finished in the fall of 1948 the Labour Day prizegiving was held outside, while the ladies prepared refreshments inside. The following year the course was renumbered to start at the clubhouse, as it does now in 1974. Entertainments were planned for each Saturday night through July and August, and ... ?





Larrimac junior division was formed in 1937
under the leadership of Mrs. John E. Read.



