The picture below of West Vancouver's Capilano Golf Club was taken in 1947. It nice to read the history of Vancouver and surrounding sites. It's a gorgeous club and below is how it got started:
West Vancouver's Capilano Golf Club, 420 Southborough Drive, 1947 Source: CVA586-15764 Opened in 1938. In 1891, Harvey Hadden from Nottingham, England, visited Vancouver. He purchased several pieces of property in downtown Vancouver, including the northeast corner of Granville and Hastings Streets, a piece between Seymour and Richards Streets on Pender Street, as well as the centre of the block on Hastings Street where Woodward's Store stood. After returning to England he consulted a close friend, Mr. Eveleigh, a pioneer Vancouver architect, who encouraged him to purchase 160 acres on the North Shore west of of the Capilano River, in 1897.
Mr. Hadden returned to Vancouver in 1903 or 1904, and built Hadden Hall on the site where the Clubhouse stood. By damming the main creek in the area, Hadden Creek, he formed the property lakes and installed a pipeline to the Hall for a complete fresh water system. The Hadden property was abandoned after the First World War for taxes, and remained a derelict for many years until it was burned down by vandals. Mr. Hadden had returned to England where he died in 1929 and Hadden Park in the West End remains as a memorial to his family name.
In the early 1930s an imaginative proposal for long term capital investment and property development was envisioned by Mr. A.J.T. Taylor of Vancouver and a group of associates. They were successful in having this plan accepted in early 1933 by a wealthy family holding company of the British Isles, the Guinness Estates. This development became known as the British Properties. The proposal included a causeway through Stanley Park, the Lions Gate Bridge, and the development of an area approximately one mile deep north of Mathers Avenue and some 14 miles wide expanding west from the Capilano River to Horseshoe Bay.
This property, encompassing the land which is occupied by Capilano Golf and Country Club, was purchased by the Municipality of West Vancouver. An integral part of the British Properties was a plan for a golf course. Mr. A.J.T. Taylor retained the services of Mr. Stanley Thompson, one of the outstanding golf course architects in America, to lay out the proposed golf course, and Mr. G.S. Conway, a Civil Engineer in Vancouver, was engaged to supervise the construction.
