Morningstar Golf Club offers spectacular views throughout its layout
PARKSVILLE – Morningstar Golf Club has been growing consistently in recent years since Covid, but that growth has increased due to a surge in the number of women taking up the game.
General Manager Barrie McWha points to International Women’s Golf Day, created by a woman in Florida, which has attracted large numbers of new players to the sports.
“The intent was to celebrate women playing the game and it has gone around the world,” says McWha. “By 2018 it was in 75 countries, all on the same day, with women playing golf, having a bite to eat and enjoying everything about it. This year it is scheduled for the week of May 31 to June 3, and Morningstar has been the only course to do it on the Island. We invite women to come out to play nine holes of golf on our course, have a meal and enjoy a silent auction and a great night out. It’s pretty special, and it’s really playing dividends for us. Women and girls getting into golf has seen significant growth!”
Morningstar Golf Club’s view from behind the 9th green
It’s resulted in new members, and continues a trend of good news since the Operating Engineers Pension Fund purchased the course in 2021. Member play, balanced with daily fee play, has contributed to financial health over the past number of years.
“Everyone in the golf industry on the Island knows that Morningstar has gone through some tough times, but the Operating Engineers have made a big difference,” McWha points out. “It takes a while to turn a big ship around, but we’ve never had a better team of people here in all my years of managing courses.”
Morningstar will host four provincial and national championships in the next number of years: the Golf Canada Nexgen Pacific Junior Championships next April, Golf Canada’s University Championships in June, 2027 hosted by the University of Victoria (held at Morningstar for the second time), the BC Amateur Championships in 2030 and in 2033, the Golf Canada Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship.
The second hole at Morningstar Golf Club is one of the most picturesque on the course
McWha said one of the major turning points for the course was when staff became aware of problems with the water in 2019, before McWha and Ray Riva came aboard with Wedgewood Golf Management to manage the course. “When Morningstar was built, it was on the basis of having access to excellent water from the French Creek sewage treatment plant,” he recalls. “When they started having incursions of sea water into the sewage treatment plant, they were unknowingly shipping salt water to the course, and that’s when they started having problems with their turf, since turf and salt water don’t go together well.
“The more the course was watered, the more they killed the grass,” he adds. “But they figured out what the problem was and the Regional District of Nanaimo wasn’t able to fix it. So we made the decision to monitor every ounce of water we could and pray for a couple of timely rainfalls in August and September. We’ve also created more holding capacity now, and we can store 20 million gallons of water, and we’re making it work on rainwater alone. Morningstar is in great shape now.”
Morningstar is also participating in the success of Golf Vancouver Island, which McWha and Riva started in 1995.
“Golf Vancouver Island is a consortium of 11 golf courses and we have a tour operator selling over $2 million of in-bound golf travel to Vancouver Island annually,” he notes. “We all put 450 rounds of golf into a pool and into the Vancouver Island Golf Trail card, and it sells out in minutes every November, as it includes a free round of golf at all participating golf courses.”
The sales of the cards funds marketing for golf on the Island.
It also gives a boost to tourism on the Island, as numerous hotels take part, along with National Car Rentals and airports at Comox and Victoria.
“It’s taken five years, but we have such a great team of people working here at Morningstar now,” McWha says, adding they have 54 on staff in peak season, and a flourishing restaurant, since head chef Brad Wilkinson joined the course several years ago from the Coast Bastion Inn, which is also owned by the Operating Engineers.
