these Open Championship Clubs choose to relief grind - Pitchcare

Golf
We arrived in Vancouver on
April 13th, 2009 and I was
harvesting aeration cores at
6.00am on April 15th!
Canada eh?
Eoghan Buckley, from Coolrain, Co. Laois, Ireland, writes
about his time spent in Vancouver, Canada working as a 2nd
Assistant Superintendent at Seymour Golf and Country Club
In the summer of 2008, after three
years as Superintendent of
Mountrath Golf Club, my wife,
Marie, and I decided that we would
try broadening our horizons and
take the plunge to live and work abroad.
The only stipulation we decided on
regarding location was that the first
language of the country had to be
English, so we both could find work
comfortably without having to learn a
new language. We had both worked and
lived in the States at some point,
however obtaining working visas for
there was tough. So we decided to look
further north, and ended up applying
for a one year work visa for Canada.
Vancouver was our destination city of
choice, voted the world’s most loveable
city nine out of the past ten years, and
14 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
boasting skiing in the morning and the
beach in the afternoon; it seemed like
the perfect location.
In March 2009, upon returning from a
six month trip around South America
and Africa, I applied to several golf
courses in the Vancouver area. Following
a phone interview with Jim McGarvey,
Superintendent at Seymour Golf and
Country Club, I was hired as a Senior
Groundsman. We arrived in Vancouver
on April 13th, 2009 and I was harvesting
aeration cores at 6.00am on April 15th!
Vancouver
Vancouver is located on the west coast of
Canada in the province of British
Columbia. The downtown population of
the city is approximately 500,000, but
urban sprawl quickly brings the
population up to around two million, if
you take in the surrounding thirty
kilometres. It is the biggest city in the
province of British Columbia, which is
almost four times the size of Great
Britain. The city is fringed by water and
set against a spectacular backdrop of
mountain peaks on the north shore.
These North Shore mountains -
Seymour, Cypress and Grouse - provide
skiing in the winter and mountain biking
and hiking in the summer for locals and
tourists alike. The world renowned
Whistler Ski resort is only a ninety
minute drive north.
The city is most well known for having
the largest urban park in North America
- Stanley Park - which is 1,000 acres in
size and was named after Lord Stanley,
the Governor General of Canada at the