Top 10 Golf Courses in Canada
Canada's golf season is compressed by winter into six or seven months of serious play — May through October in most provinces, with British Columbia offering a marginally longer window on its Pacific coast. This compression, far from diminishing the country's golf, has concentrated quality into a summer that golfers approach with the urgency of people who know the window will close. The Canadian Open is one of the oldest national championships on the PGA Tour calendar, having been played since 1904, and the courses that have hosted it represent the best of what a vast country has to offer. From the seaside cliffs of Cape Breton Island to the parkland estates of Ontario, Canadian golf rewards any visitor willing to travel.
1. Hamilton Golf and Country Club (South Course), Ancaster
Hamilton's South Course, near the city of Ancaster in Ontario, is among the finest inland courses in Canada and has hosted the Canadian Open on multiple occasions. Originally designed by Harry Colt in 1915 and revised over the following decades, the parkland layout uses the Niagara Escarpment terrain with genuine variety — elevation changes, wooded corridors, and green complexes that reward precise iron play from the correct angles. The course is private and serious about its competitive standards; it is the kind of club where members track their handicap index carefully.
2. St. George's Golf and Country Club, Toronto
St. George's, in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, was designed by Stanley Thompson in 1929 and is one of the finest examples of Thompson's work — a Canadian architect who, like his contemporary Alister MacKenzie, understood that golf courses should work with their terrain rather than against it. The ravines and slopes of the St. George's property give the layout a topographic variety unusual for the flat southern Ontario region, and the conditioning is consistently among the best in the country. St. George's has hosted the Canadian Open seven times. Private.
3. Cabot Cliffs, Cape Breton Island
Cabot Cliffs, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and opened in 2016, is the finest new course built in Canada in decades and among the best in the world. The site on the Cabot Trail at Inverness, Cape Breton, offers clifftop ocean views comparable to anything in Ireland or Scotland, with holes played along the edge of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on terrain as dramatic as any in links golf. Cabot Cliffs is public and accessible through the Cabot resort, which also operates the adjacent Cabot Links. Together the two courses make Cape Breton a pilgrimage destination for serious golf tourists.
4. Cabot Links, Cape Breton Island
Where Cabot Cliffs provides drama, Cabot Links — designed by Rod Whitman and opened in 2012 — provides purity. The course plays on flat coastal land beside the town of Inverness, with the Gulf of St. Lawrence visible from most holes and the wind a constant factor. It is the truest links course in Canada — low and exposed, demanding ground game as well as aerial shot-making, rewarding creative play — and it represents a genuine departure from the tree-lined parkland that dominates Canadian golf. Public, bookable through Cabot resort.
5. Highlands Links, Cape Breton Highlands National Park
Highlands Links, designed by Stanley Thompson and opened in 1939, is the crown jewel of golf in Canada's national parks system and one of the finest mountain golf experiences on the continent. The course runs through the Cape Breton Highlands with the Clyburn River crossing multiple times and the Appalachian terrain providing constant drama. Thompson called it his 'Mountains and Ocean' course. It is publicly accessible within the national park, with green fees that make it one of the most underpriced great golf experiences in the country.
6. National Golf Club of Canada, Woodbridge
The National, near Toronto, was designed by George and Tom Fazio and opened in 1974. It is the most exclusive golf club in Canada — membership is by invitation only, the membership list is unpublished, and visitor access is essentially impossible without the right connections. The course itself, a Fazio design of considerable quality set in Humber Valley terrain, is rarely discussed publicly for the same reasons. Those who have played it describe it as immaculate and among the two or three best courses in the country.
7. Marine Drive Golf Club, Vancouver
Marine Drive, in the Champlain Heights area of Vancouver, is the best-positioned club in Canada's most golf-friendly major city. The course has occupied its current site since the early twentieth century and has developed the kind of character that only decades of membership cultivation can produce. The layout is a classic parkland course and, while not exceptional by international standards, provides a very solid round of golf in a city with far fewer quality options than its reputation might suggest. Private.
8. Heron Point Golf Links, Alberton
Heron Point on Prince Edward Island, designed by Graham Cooke, is part of the 'Links at Crowbush Cove' tradition of PEI golf — courses that take advantage of the island's gentle coastal topography and the red sand beaches that make it famous as a tourist destination. The Links at Crowbush Cove, designed by Thomas McBroom and opened in 1994, is the better-known of the two and consistently rated one of the top public courses in eastern Canada.
9. Fairmont Banff Springs Golf Course, Alberta
The Banff Springs Golf Course, designed by Stanley Thompson in 1928 and later revised, offers the most spectacular mountain setting in Canadian golf. The course occupies the Bow Valley in Banff National Park, with the Rocky Mountains rising on all sides and the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel dominating the skyline. The Hole in One — the par-three fourth, played downhill to a green ringed by the Bow River — is among the most memorable tee shots in the country. Playable June through September; snow is possible in any month.
10. Predator Ridge Golf Resort (Ridge Course), Vernon
Predator Ridge, in British Columbia's Okanagan wine country near Vernon, is the best resort course in western Canada outside of Vancouver Island. The Ridge course, designed by Les Furber, uses the dry interior hills of the Okanagan with native ponderosa pine and lake views creating a setting that combines western Canada's landscape with genuinely strategic design. The Okanagan's dry, warm summer climate extends the playing season well beyond that of the wetter coast, and the region's wine and food culture makes it a natural holiday destination.
Canada's peak golf season runs from late May through September in most provinces, with British Columbia extending play into October. Cape Breton's season is shorter — June through September is the reliable window. Green fees at private clubs require member connections; Cabot Cliffs, Cabot Links, Highlands Links, and most resort courses are publicly accessible. Open the map to find Canadian courses from coast to coast and plan your summer itinerary.