Overlooking the Annapolis Basin, the modern day 18-hole layout at Digby Pines Golf Resort & Spa started out as the New Pines Hotel Golf Course, designed by Stanley Thompson in the late 1920s for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The following edited extract is taken from Stanley Thompson and Icons of Canada by James M. Harris:
“Edward Beatty [CPR President] announced to the press on July 25, 1929 that the CPR had purchased 250 acres of land adjacent to its new Pines Hotel at Digby NS. He further said a golf course would be built there and that he expected play would begin in 1930.
The Digby Pines GC is another example where Stanley built a large number of bunkers and mound complexes that are wonderful earth sculptures. The golf course continues to be modern in every way but it has the distinction of being one of the very few of Stanley’s golf courses that remains virtually untouched and unaltered since it opened in 1930.
There are plenty of memorable holes at Digby Pines GC and among them is the par three second which Stanley used in advertisements well into the 1940s.”
