In Loving Memory of Bruce Summers
Bruce’s Golf Rewards is a program named in honour of Bruce Summers, the founder and developer of many golf courses in Durham Region, who passed away March 2, 2006. For a glimpse of the man’s incredible history in golf and other sports, here’s an article that appeared in a Durham Region newspaper in 2004.
By Brian Legree
BROOKLIN – You may not know Bruce Summers, but if you play golf in Durham Region, chances are you are very familiar with his work.
Over the past 40 years, Summers has been one of Durham’s foremost public golf course builders, having sculpted the land to produce Lakeridge Links, Whispering Ridge, Seaton, Oshawa Airport, Winchester and Summerlea. His initial foray into golf was in Toronto where he built Hillsdale (now Maple Downs) in 1949, followed by Morningside and Buttonwood.
His incredible resume spans some 60 years in golf, but is just one aspect of the true sportsman Summers is. Aside from golf, Summers has been a Toronto Maple Leafs season-ticket holder for more than 50 years, has attended several Olympic and Commonwealth Games, held Toronto Argonauts season-tickets for many years and been a regular spectator at the Canadian Track and Field Championships. From an individual standpoint, Summers has completed a number of marathons, was a competitive sailor and is still a regular fixture on the ski hills at Craigleith in Collingwood.
It’s not just major events that attract his sporting interest. Quietly, Summers has provided financial and in-kind support to a host of school athletics, including university, high school and elementary school sports.
Now 75 and having marked the magical 50th anniversary milestone with wife Gwen in December of 2003, Summers shows no signs of slowing down. He still golfs regularly, yearning (like most golfers) for longer drives and lower scores.
Those long bombs and low numbers came frequently as Summers developed his love for golf as a teenager growing up in Toronto.
“I lived with my grandfather and grew up next door to the Willowdale G.C. (designed by legendary Stanley Thompson),” says Summers, himself an only child who is a father of seven and grandfather of nine.
“Around 1943 the war was on and they couldn’t get people to work at the golf course because the older people were in the armed forces, so I got a job. I cut grass with a push mower – you got a job if you were willing to work, it was kind of like farm work.”
After moving to the Weston area and working on a course that is now home to Humber Valley G.C., the then17 year old continued his golf education working in the pro shop and on the course.
“I really got a feel for the golf business and wanted to be a part of it,” says Summers. “It’s something I really enjoyed. Probably I could see a future in golf. The war had just ended and the game did begin to boom after the war, after money became somewhat more available.”
While working at Humber Valley, Summers decided to put his own mark on a piece of property.
“I wanted to build a golf course, but I had no idea of the money, or the work involved, “ he says. “Just the challenge of building a golf course from a farm, I loved the game.”
Building a golf course in 1949 was a hands-on proposition. It wasn’t about massive earth-moving machines or computer-aided designs. Summers says designing a course then meant “walking every foot of it – bush and rivers, we had to get a feel for the land.”
It had less to do with technology and more to do with shovels, wheelbarrows and sweat. Summers and Toronto-based partner Myles Leckie sweated it out while building Hillsdale, and forged that relationship into the mid-1980s.
It’s that roll-up-the-sleeves, work from sun up to sundown determination that has earned Summers respect both inside and outside the golf business.
Dr. Terry Brown, an Ajax physician who has known Summers for 35 years, calls Summers “one of my heroes. I always had as heroes people who take risks. How many people do you know who had the balls in 1955 to buy a wheelbarrow and shovel and some farm land and turn it into a golf course? It’s like man on the moon stuff.”
The grass hasn’t always been green for Summers, however. His biggest challenge came in 1999, when he toppled off a small bulldozer down a cliff at Winchester, leaving him temporarily paralyzed and with a serious head injury.
In typical Summers fashion, he just kept working at his rehabilitation and today enjoys good health.
“I live a normal life, perhaps my golf game isn’t as good as it should be,” says Summers shrugging.
Beyond golf, Summers has teed up a variety of volunteer activities. He’s an elder at Burns Presbyterian Church in Ashburn, served for years on the board of Fernie House, a Pickering group home for youth, has helped with Meals on Wheels, drove cancer patients to Princess Margaret Hospital – and the list goes on.
Perhaps the truest testament of his commitment to work came a few years ago when he announced his ‘retirement’. After precisely one day of taking it easy, Summers was back at the golf course the next day, putting in an honest day’s work.
“I would be lost without going to the golf course every day, ” he says.
After a lifetime in golf, Summers still gets a kick watching people play the game. “The biggest reward I have is seeing people play the golf course. People enjoy playing every type of golf course – that’s the biggest satisfaction.
As a golf fan, Summers has travelled to watch the British Open and the Canadian Open, but his own passion for the game reached the pinnacle in 2003, when he was in Augusta, Georgia watching Canada’s Mike Weir win the Masters.
While Summers has been one of the great builders of the game of golf in Durham, it has also provided him plenty, he says.
“The whole thing has been fun, there was never a time I didn’t enjoy it,” he says.