Rich Americans began escaping the heat and disease of industrial cities for the Charlevoix resort as early as the mid-19th century, arriving on steamships to stay for months at a time.
asserted
Americans → begin → time
The air vivified like champagne without the hangover, according to Murray Bay stalwart – and onetime U.S. president – William Howard Taft.
uncertain
air → vivify → Taft
The gin, meanwhile, flowed like the mighty St. Lawrence as cocktail hour descended on the Boulevard, where the summer residents had their mansions.
asserted
residents → flow → mansions
The pews of Murray Bay Protestant Church were stuffed with tycoons from Chicago, financiers from Montreal and Vanderbilt heiresses.
asserted
pews → stuff → Montreal
But the real social nexus of this improbable concentration of English-speaking privilege deep in rural Quebec was the Murray Bay Golf Club.
asserted
nexus → speak → Quebec
Starting in 1876, Cabots and Culvers and Tiffanys began hitting the links on an old cow pasture as they summered in style.
asserted
they → start → style
That was 150 years ago, a landmark the club has celebrated with a glossy coffee-table book and multiple festivities.
asserted
club → celebrate → book
Murray Bay claims to be the oldest golf course in North America still in its original location, and while that is debatable – a course in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., pegs its beginnings a year earlier – it remains a venerable looking glass through which the history of Quebec emerges, first in sepia and later in Technicolor.
uncertain
history → claim → Technicolor
Much of the old course is proudly unchanged since the first players whacked gutta-percha balls with mashie-niblick clubs over grazing livestock.
asserted
players → whack → livestock
But the club and the community have changed over the years, quietly but dramatically, in ways that reflect the evolving society around them.
asserted
that → change → them
The bay lies two hours northeast of Quebec City, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, hugged by the lush green hills of Charlevoix.
asserted
bay → lie → Charlevoix
It’s easy to see what Gilded Age Yankees would have liked about the region.
asserted
Yankees → ’ → region
It lay within a seigneury, a feudal holdover from the days of New France, owned by the English-speaking Nairne family, and later the Duggans.
asserted
It → lie → family
Québécois cooks and gardeners often stayed with the same anglophone families for generations, summer after summer, and sometimes even returned with them to New York or Boston in the winter.
asserted
cooks → stay → winter
The same pattern emerged at the golf club.
asserted
pattern → emerge → club
Although there was always a smattering of bourgeois francophone members – Quebec premier Lomer Gouin, pioneering feminist Thérèse Casgrain – more common were the adolescent caddies from the village who were chosen by the Anglo golfers every morning before tee time.
asserted
who → be → time
The optics of this linguistic hierarchy may seem cringeworthy today, but they were pretty well accepted in Murray Bay for decades, said Martin Guérin, the club’s current director of operations, whose father served as one of those caddies.
uncertain
father → seem → caddies
“Our families were so connected, I don’t think it was frowned upon,” Mr. Guérin said.
asserted
Guérin → think → ?
An English-speaking elite controlled the commanding heights of the economy from Montreal while successive governments welcomed waves of American capital.
asserted
governments → speak → capital
The early 20th century saw the creation of hundreds of private hunting and fishing clubs that claimed the most picturesque slices of the province.
asserted
that → see → province
Life was grand for those who cruised into Murray Bay on the famed bateaux blanc in that era.
asserted
who → cruise → era
Stockbrokers in Montreal who couldn’t get away for the whole season could take overnight steamers from Montreal on Fridays, sleeping off their three-martini dinners in private berths.
uncertain
who → get → berths
The golf club dominated the summer colony’s social life.
asserted
club → dominate → life
Taft was a regular on the links, known for harrumphing “piffle” or “posh” after a bad shot.
asserted
Taft → know → shot
When The New Yorker profiled Murray Bay in 1926, it observed that the great homes each had a telescope or opera glasses to locate the master of the house down on the course.
asserted
homes → profile → course
Conversation among the expats, the magazine reported, was “easy, intimate, and usually about golf.”
asserted
magazine → report → golf
This heyday began to wane after the Second World War, when the rise of the car and commercial air travel changed American vacationing patterns.
asserted
rise → begin → patterns
Summering in one boreal location started to fall out of fashion: Now families were more likely to take shorter road trips, or else fly to the Caribbean if they could afford it, said Alain Chaput, author of a recently published history of the club.
uncertain
Chaput → summer → club
That led to a decline in membership, and a corresponding effort to recruit more local francophones – mostly professionals and well-off businessmen at first, Mr. Chaput said.
asserted
Chaput → lead → francophones
“They didn’t want to open the doors to just anyone.”
asserted
They → want → anyone
The move dovetailed with the growing assertion of a secular French-speaking identity against the old hegemony of the Catholic Church and English business.
asserted
move → dovetail → Church
The last anglophone to win the club golf tournament for decades, J.M. Livingood, claimed the crown in 1959, at the dawn of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.
asserted
anglophone → win → Revolution
The club bylaws were only translated into French in 2007, Mr. Chaput observed, and the club still clings to the name Murray Bay, as opposed to the official French name, La Malbaie.
asserted
club → translate → name
The clubhouse, meanwhile, is the oldest of its kind in Quebec – partly built in 1905 – and retains a comfortably down-at-heel, old-money atmosphere, with dingy green carpeting and an ancient stone fireplace.
But today, the membership is almost entirely francophone and solidly middle-class.
asserted
membership → build → carpeting
The neighbouring golf course of the Manoir Richelieu – a luxurious Fairmont hotel dating to the 1920s – is more expensive and high-toned, Mr. Chaput said.
asserted
Chaput → date → 1920s
Vestiges of the old days can still be found around town.
asserted
Vestiges → find → town
Members of the Taft family still visit in the summers.
asserted
Members → visit → summers
The Boulevard, long since renamed le Chemin des Falaises, is still dotted with grand private homes that look out on the bay.
asserted
that → rename → bay
The golf course is a lovely period piece, with features that are “rustic, even bizarre,” Mr. Chaput said, such as little tea-saucer greens and camel-hump fairways.
asserted
Chaput → say → greens
The golf historian recommended the nine-hole Peter Ryan course for those who want to relive “the ambiance of the era.
asserted
who → recommend → era
…and 6 more, not listed.
