In the words of the great Robert Hunter, ‘what a long, strange trip it’s been’.
Living somewhere that has 4 distinct and beautiful seasons has had a lasting impact on me. If you're paying attention you realize that everything has a time and place. If you are lucky enough to have agency over your own time you can choose to do things where they belong. You go to the beach when it’s hot, cut wood when it’s dry, plant flowers when it’s damp and warm, you get the idea. Over the last few years I have been slowly shifting my schedule to try and take advantage of each opportunity that is presented with the changing weather. Autumn in Atlantic
Canada is made for disc golf, trust me on this one.
Because of a healthy sports schedule for my daughter and a few other life choices I had set myself up for a 3 week whirlwind trip that included 2 of the best events in our tour calendar (Iron Leaf and Discmania Open) and two disc golf projects that were dear to my heart (St John’s and Corner Brook). Each stop encapsulated something wonderful that I had been working on for a while. This, in all likelihood, will be the last year I work with this format that I started almost 10 years ago. I am positioning myself to try something different in 2025 (details will be posted when I have them finalized). So, as I stated before, I was trying my absolute best to make each one of these perfect.
My itinerary looked like this:
Sept 20 - Pugwash to New Minas. Set up temp holes and finalize layout for Iron Leaf
Sept 21/22 - Play and TD Iron Leaf
Sept 22 - New Minas to North Sydney Ferry Terminal
Overnight Ferry to Port Aux Basque
Sept 23-26 Course Improvements at Corner Brook
Sept 26 - Corner Brook to St John’s
Sept 27 - 29 Tee pad creation at Confederation Park
Sept 30 (3am) - St Johns to Corner Brook final day of course improvements
Overnight Ferry to NS
Oct 1 - North Sydney - Parrsborro (daughters soccer game)
Oct 2 - Pugwash to Kings Pine final day course set up
Oct 3 - Players meeting
Oct 4-6 Discmania Open
Oct 7 - Sleep
Again, I am not trying to romanticize my work routine because even I know that this is insane, I am simply highlighting what this 17 day stretch entails. Each working day is a minimum of 12 hours long and involves a blend of mental and physical labour.
The Iron Leaf
If you have ever taken part in this event you will know why it is a fan favourite. A few years ago it was the event that brought us back to a positive place after hurricane Fiona. Most years it is just a stunning display of high quality disc golf in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. This year the locals had just finished creating 2 brand new, and very challenging holes that were added to our 24 hole tournament layout. We were a few weeks earlier in the fall season than normal but the leaves were just starting to change and spirits were as high as they had ever been.
The competition was as good as it always is. We had a few throw-back winners and a few surprises. It is interesting to take note of how far we have come in the last 10 years. These events are basically a well oiled machine at this point. The caddy books are solid, the timing is smooth, individual problems are identified and dealt with, and the overall vibe is positive. It took years for us to dial in this system and it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would get it right, but eventually we did thanks to many people contributing their skills for the greater good.
An interesting thing happened on Friday night at our airbnb. We busted out some guitars and people that had been traveling partners for years discovered another shared passion; making wonderful music. It didn’t take long for a skeleton set list to be created and several musicians went home to practice new chord arrangements on top of their disc golf duties.
On Sunday we cleaned up at twice the speed we set up, I filled my truck to the absolute brim and made my way to the ferry. Another night sleeping on the floor landed me on the best coast and had me ready for part 2 of this adventure.
Corner Brook
As you probably know each course I have ever built holds some special power on me but some courses this magic spell is deeper than others. There is a very short list of places that are so important to me that I have a hard time putting into words. The Corner Brook course is very near to the top of that list. The place itself is my kind of town, perched near the ocean with lovely trees, basking in sunlight, and filled with warm friendly people. The course has a potential 500 acres of rolling hills and distinct character to work with.
On this trip I was given 10k to do course improvements that included adding drainage on hole 2, and cutting out the framework for new holes in the back section. I have a master plan in my mind where there are 2 separate 18 hole courses on the ‘quarry side’ and a 9 hole course on the ‘Atlantic Pitch’ side. Day 1 on the course was a beauty. Perfect fall sunshine and light breezes. I spent the entire day mapping out the machines movements, flagging lines, and doing all the math involved with the next 3 days of intense action. In my younger years I would have scoffed at the idea of spending a day doing math and planning, but the older I get the more I realize one day of planning is worth at least two days of action. What I save in stupid moves and creating back up plans on day one always justifies the ‘down time’. This project would be no different.
On day 2 we jumped in full throttle, I ran a skid steer and directed an operator in a mini excavator. I moved almost 100 yards of mulch throughout the front 9 of the course and over 20 tonnes of drainage rock. We created pathways and opened up sub fairways so that holes could be combined for bigger events. We buried stumps that were tripping hazards. We smoothed out areas that had once been rough. We made beautiful progress.
Since I had spent the entirety of my day on the ‘front 9’ I took count of how many people were playing. On Monday I noticed 14 different players, 13 of them I had never seen before. On Tuesday that number skyrocketed to 43 players, 38 of whom I had never met. This was astounding to me since the last few years it felt like we hadn’t broken into the true locals and when I left I basically knew almost everyone playing the course. On Wednesday I had to move my operations to the back side of the property and begin to cut out the new holes. I had hired a local who has done a lot of the work with me over the last few years. He would be my eyes, ears, and muscle on the days I had to be off site. We work wonderfully together. Wednesday I noticed 17 people playing and started to see a trend in repeats from the days prior.
As with all projects in Newfoundland there are always some unexpected bumps in the road with machines and timing. This part of the project was no different but since we were expecting some of that we pivoted and did our best to not lose any down time. We carved out new holes, prepped some tee pads, and generally made the best of the situation. By the time I was ready to leave on Wednesday it was almost completely dark. As I drug myself to my truck I noticed a single car still in the parking lot. I assumed it was just some locals hanging out and went about my business of cleaning up. As soon as I got to my truck the car doors opened up and two kind and lovely people made a beeline to me. There are only two distinct ways these conversations go, either the person/people are upset that I am onsite cutting trees and disrupting something they feel possessive over or these people are disc golfers and want to say thank you. I braced for the worst and hoped for the best. When they arrived at my truck it was easy to tell they were there to say thank you. It was a lovely couple, middle aged, and very passionate about their new pass time. The young lady told me she heard the course builder was in town and needed to come find me and say thank you. She came home from work, played the course then waited in the parking lot just to give me a hug and tell me how much disc golf changed her life for the better. I cried most of my drive home that night, just little tears of happiness because I believe in how much this game can give to people. I am happy to play a part in this discovery for people. The next morning I met several more of the new players I had been seeing on the course and I started asking everyone questions, here is what I found out; Somewhere around early Aug a couple of the Corner Brook locals who were born and raised there were at the Atlantic Pitch watching a soccer game when they saw some people walking by playing the disc golf course. They were intrigued so they threw a few shots themselves. By that night they had ordered discs online. Within days they had started telling their friends and one by one an entire group of people started playing the course daily. About 12-15 of these people started playing and each of them had played over 40 rounds in their first 30 days. They were hooked. They asked so many great questions when we met that it inspired me all over again. Time away from my family is so hard but moments like these keep my life balanced. We made a plan for me to play a round with them when I came back on Monday before I left for the ferry. I left Corner Brook with a huge smile on my face and headed for town.
This particular trip to St John’s was centred around building 18 tee pads on Confederation Park. As I have often joked, Confederation Park is the simplest course I have ever built. It is in an old farmers field near the centre of town. It has some modest elevation changes and very few trees. It is the perfect practice course and 18 high quality tee pads will make this a much more pleasurable experience for those who use it regularly. This trip had double significance for me as I invited my uncle and his two sons up from Boston. My uncle and his youngest had never been to Newfoundland before so this was a great chance to share such an important place in my world with some of the most important people I have. All 4 of us can operate machines and come from the working world where we don’t mind getting dirty and want to see the job done right.
I rented us an airB&B picked them up (20 minutes late due to bad information) from the airport and we set out for 3 full days in town. Again there were some delays and technical difficulties in getting our machines and materials but once things all arrived the 4 of us put our heads down and made some great progress. We did a modest amount of debating and suggestion making before settling on our working theory on how to best achieve satisfaction.
As we were building the pads I noticed a handful of groups playing the course. Most people I knew were able to wave them through while we worked but one group kind of lingered at hole 1 not knowing whether or not to play through. Eventually I caught their eye and told them we were here as disc golfers and they could play through whenever they were ready. We crossed paths up close on hole 2 and I noticed that one of the gentlemen was playing with a bag of discs older than most people playing disc golf in Newfoundland. Obviously I couldn’t help myself so i stuck up a conversation with him about how he started playing. I was not prepared for his answer.
It turns out I was talking to a legend in Newfoundland that nobody knew about. His name was Sean Conway, pdga number 9503. His story goes something like this; back in 1991 (I have given you a little glimpse of what disc golf was like that year) Sean was in Ontario and saw the game of disc golf. He loved it and as soon as he returned home to Avondale, NL that year he went about building his own course. He used tone poles and some neighbors / crown land and created an 18 hole disc golf course. He found out that there was a ‘disc golf day’ competition where the club who could get the most people to the course would win 9 baskets. Sean got 76 players to take part for that day in 1991. He and his group ended up being second to the club in Toronto who had over 100 players. Essentially Sean was about 40 players short of having the third basketed course in Canada be located in Avondale Newfoundland. When he told me this you could have knocked me over with a feather. I am still in awe of this fact a few weeks later and hope that by writing this Sean can get more of his due as a pioneer of disc golf in Canada. The tone pole course existed for about 13 years until it was finally taken down in 2004. Every single thing about Sean and his story brought me joy and I did my best to connect him with the folks who were in town running the provincial championship that very same weekend. It was a perfect blend of timing and luck or it was divine intervention. Either way it was awesome.
The next few days we spent doing some tourist stuff, walking George street, hanging out on the rocky coast lines and searching for moose. My family time was so refreshing and the way we worked together makes me think I could hire these guys to help me with more of my courses.
Eventually we said goodbye and I drove through the night back to the west coast. I slept on the side of the highway for a few hours and made it back for a full working day at the Corner Brook course. Once I was satisfied with the work that was done at the course I met up with the band of locals who had been playing this course daily. It was another refreshing injection of new passion and lifelong friends I had only just met.
I do often worry that when people meet me I may have to live up to some level of expectations. I have been playing disc golf for over 20 years but my competitive play has taken a back seat to my building practices over the last few years. Still, I was able to give all of these new players some solid throwing advice and help them correct the common mistakes almost all players make when learning the game. We spent an amazing hour and a half on the course and they left me feeling more refreshed then when I had arrived. They also put into motion a plan to submit a chowder cup team from Newfoundland this year. Another dream come true.
Now for those of you who are familiar with taking the ferry you will know that the loading game is a tricky prospect all in itself. If you get there too early you will be put on the bottom deck and be the last to get off. If you get there too late they might not let you on at all. So this time I did my best to time my trip properly and get myself to the boat. I drove slowly and thought a lot about what this trip meant for me now and what my future holds. I have built 45 permanent courses and another 10 that people think of as permanent temp courses (think Fundy National Park and Wallace River). Time away from home gets harder and harder for me as I realize the delicate balance of missing time with my children, while still showing them it is ok to follow your passion. I don’t have the answer to perfect time distribution but I just know these trips take a huge mental toll. When I finally got on the boat I was the last car before the bottom gate closed, which meant I would be the very first car off the boat in the morning. It might not seem like much but that was basically my version of winning the boat lottery.
After what could only be described as the worst sleep of my life I ate breakfast and headed for home just in time to pick my daughter up from school and head to a soccer game. One sleep at home and then a repacking of my truck took me straight to Kings Pine for a practice round and course set up.
Kings Pine: the closest thing to a perfect event yet.
A huge difference for me now is that there are multiple people carrying their weight on course set up days so I no longer have to do it all myself. I have an odd mix of gratitude and guilt about this which I know I should get over.
Over the last few weeks Kings Pine came back into its own. For the first time since Fiona the course feels intentional. The fairways have thick grass covering them and the canopy is doing its best to cover the empty sky. The new holes 3-6 give that closed in feeling and the fact that they are dotted with huge pine trees makes it feel like they have been a part of this course forever. Practice rounds are easy. The setup was simple. People started to trickle in and you could hear the chatter over the entire 60 acres. It felt like success.
After 10+ years of running B and A tier events I have started to notice some patterns. People are nervous, shy, and uncertain if they belong here on day 1, but by the Sunday of each of these events all you have is a group of people who love and respect each other and are generally so happy that they made the decision to be here. It is such a blissful cycle that I enjoy seeing it play out every time. This event was special to me in so many ways that I would like to share with you a few.
First let’s start with the only thing that I can say needs improvement: the finances. To run an A tier you need to add at least $3,000 added cash to the pro fields, make the payouts 110% for the Am fields and play at least 54 holes. None of these things are insurmountable but they all require work. I could do the fundraising if that was my sole job, but since I am almost always living on the margin I have to work for the majority of my time. I made several trips to Kings PIne to help with the rebuilding and redesigning of the new course and to oversee that timely progress was made in the places it was needed. The Gills have always compensated me fairly for my time, a fact that I owe a huge debt of gratitude for. I also made the decision to have this event filmed because I thought it was the right thing to do. The Gills decided they would top up the payouts to make sure $6,000 added cash was put into the purse and I did my part to make sure the Am players pack were unique and valuable. Several very key things worked against us this year financially. The downturn in the disc golf market being one of them. We also lost 2 of our 3 biggest financial supporters completely and the third reduced the amount given by a significant margin. I still did my best to scramble to find replacements and solutions for problems very few people knew existed. Despite my best efforts this was the only event this year that lost money. It didn’t lose much and it is completely within an acceptable framework of doing business but it was slightly in the red. I am not writing this for sympathy, I consider my financial contribution to this event to be a worthwhile investment on behalf of my disc company. I see this as my last gift to the greater disc golf community but it is also the main reason I no longer wish to run A tiers. There are ways to generate more funds from the business world but I just have not had the time, energy, or space to do that. In most other sports (in Canada) municipalities, cities, or host organizations bid on big events and are able to go after bigger pools of money. I expect this is the future of disc golf too. I just happened to be near the end of the generation of TD’s and LOC’s who shouldered the financial burden as well as the logistics. To be clear Gill Construction put in significantly more money than I did personally but something about the two most involved parties having to also put up the biggest portion of personal money doesn’t sit right with me. It is one part a failure on my behalf to not work a better system and one part a flaw in the existing way we have always done things. In the future I can run B tier events that are cost neutral to all parties and still give our players incredible value. That is where I will go and more information will be shared on what I have planned for next year very soon. Again I am not writing this for sympathy, condolences, or anything other than transparency. I struggled to even include this in the write up but I decided to do so because part of writing about these events is to shed truth on all the reality that makes these events so awesome. The disc golf industry is changing and I think it is for the better. I am beyond grateful for the opportunities that I have been provided this year and beyond. All of our other events were cost neutral and I believe we delivered a great product to our players. A product that I, and everyone involved, are extremely proud of.
Now for the list of good things.
Kings Pine the Second
The first thing to be truly grateful for is the course. Kings Pine came back with nobility. Holes 1 through 5 played incredibly. All of the other holes played like I was hoping they would with some birdies and some worse-than-par scores. When we design these things you have ideas and you hope that they will come true when people play them but you never know until you see it. I walked the course with several people while they were playing and played in groups of my own. I saw a variety of shots and both great and poor decision making. People talked strategies and tried to execute. The course felt intentional. It was also a perfect reminder that what the storm robbed us was not just the original build but instead it robbed us of a true ‘gold’ layout. This version of Kings Pine featured a perfect Red, Purple, and Blue layout. Very few people in the field got under par although if you asked most people they felt breaking par was well within their skill set.
The Dream Team
The second thing I would like to bring attention to is the dream team we have finally gathered. It’s possible that this collection of people will never work together on a common project again as each person has their own goals and disc golf dreams they would like to pursue. It is equally possible that we all continue to do at least one thing a year like this together. Starting with Rick R and his incredible caddy book, to the Gills and Derek who made the course shine, and passing all the way through to Duncan, the Golden Boys (or girls, I never know which), and a cast of unnamed characters who always seem to be there when set up or teardown happens this event went as smooth as any event I have ever seen. Top that off with Luc calling in each card and making every group feel as if this event was put on specifically for them and you have all the things that make for an incredible event. There are two incredibly huge compliments I can give. The first is to note that less than 2 hours after the event was finished my truck was completely packed and the course was mostly clean (other yellow baskets had to be put back in place). The second compliment is that for most of the weekend I was useless. This is a direct result in so many other people taking a task and knocking it out of the park. Teamwork truly makes the dream work.
The Eternal Fire Keeps Burning
My family usually gets together for 1 week at the beach every year. It is one of our long standing traditions to light a fire on shore and keep it going for the 7 days we are together. The fire is a constant gathering place. Sometimes it is there to keep you warm, sometimes it is there as a place to share stories. Other times it is just a light in the darkness. No matter what it is a central part of our time spent together. For most of our disc golf events this fire has been missing. We usually don’t have the luxury of just lighting things on fire and watching it burn when we are on municipal courses so the fact that Kings PIne had the space and capacity to let us do this was just another bonus in an already successful event. Each night people gathered around this fire to sing songs, tell stories, and be together in a way I didn’t know I had longed for until we had it in front of us again. As a special gift I learned that leaf blowers have a multitude of functions and that making fires more interesting is one of them.
Family
The future of disc golf in Atlantic Canada is bright. Brighter than I ever thought it would be at this stage of our development and the biggest reason is so cheesy that it makes me smile every time I think about it; simply put we love each other. There is a comradery of the course owners, TDs, and players that is so genuine that you can feel it. Despite great play on the course and each person wanting to do their personal best, we are not competing against each other, but we are competing with each other in the true spirit of play. I have never played any other game that embodies this as much as disc golf. No place embodied this more than the Gills living room during this event. Although I never had a dream of grandeur when I started I did often think about how cool it would be to have multiple generations of people playing together some day. When Kings Pine was being designed we talked about the impact it could have on our kids and what a legacy project really looked like. On any given morning or evening you could find 4 kids inside of the hosts house making memories they didn’t know they would have. Each kid found themselves there by taking a different route, some by circumstance, some by chance, and some by design. The four kids that populated that living room are all exceptional humans, kind, and loving well beyond their age and each parent of those boys should take an immense amount of pride in helping to raise a child that will be a positive force to the world. I don’t want to get too sappy but all of my work is worth it knowing there are kids out there who have fallen in love with the game and that we have given them a fair place to play it.
You can see this is the wider disc golf world too. The youth movement is taking over. It’s funny to all of us that the 3 maritime provinces all have such immense talent in players under 20 years old. It seems if you are 30 years old you are now considered one of the old guys…. That’s quite the turnaround in a few short years. I am probably biased but since I have spent a significant amount of time with most of these kids and seen them all progress from the start I can’t help feeling proud of the product they are all displaying on the course. The fact that we had a Canadian film crew on site to capture all of this was the icing on the cake. Canada is a hard country to make progress in. We are huge, with one major road connecting us from east to west. The thought of Canadians ‘making it’ in the professional world usually means they have to pack their bags and head south to the US but slowly, over time, local pockets of incredible events have been popping up. Having Parked Pro on site to tell Canadian stories is another giant step forward. It connects us and gives people a reason to feel pride in what all the pockets of wonderful people in this country are doing. It was also so great for our players to get the chance to be on coverage and to see if they could live up to their own standards of play. I can’t wait to see the finished product.
In the end this stretch of time will be imprinted on me for the rest of my life. I hope it shapes the lives of all the people who have taken part in any way, shape, or form.
I have one final event for the season. A temp course at Ski Wentworth that will serve as our 2024 Tour Championship. If you are on the fence just know this is one of the tee locations.
Registration can be found here. We have an incredible two days of disc golf lined up that you really don't want to miss. Thanks again for being along for the ride.
Until next time, throw a little and have a lot of fun
