Daniel Gregorio
“At around age 12, I started playing golf. But before that time, we used to camp out as a family in Kananaskis, and we would always bike up to the golf course from the campsite. We would arrive at the putting green on the top deck, just by the Clubhouse, and we would look out over the valley where you can see the 8th and 9th holes.
I remember telling my Dad, ‘we just have to play here. It looks so beautiful’.
So, every year we would be in Kananaskis, we would stop for a minute and just look over the golf course. This was the fuel that ignited my love for golf, and for the courses of Kananaskis.
Every summer – I would have been 12 or 13 by that time - we would camp for a week in July, and then again in August, traveling from our home in Edmonton. Golf became a huge part of those weeks in Kananaskis. Typically, we would play Lorette in July, and Kidd in August.
It would be myself and Dad, and my friend and his Dad. We’d book an early morning tee time, and I remember it never raining at all. We would wake up at 5:30am in the morning and it was frosty on the campground. We’d leave the tent and pack up our things for the game, and the day always started with a hot breakfast in the Clubhouse.
Those weeks were always what I looked forward to, and we never missed a single round when we camped. It was always the four of us, and we had a lot of laughs. I have great memories.
My friend and his family then moved away to Vancouver, and so Dad and I didn’t always get to Kananaskis in the summertime. Eventually however, when I was about 18 or 19 years old, I’d drive with a group of friends from B.C. to the course, and we would play Lorette on a Saturday, Kidd on the Sunday.
The course was just perfect – the tee boxes are nicer in Kananaskis than many greens of other courses. It’s a real treat to play; every detail of the course so well thought-out. You felt like you were in the big league playing out in Kananaskis.
This past May [2017], my friend was in Kananaskis and visited the course. He sent me a picture of the Lorette course, which was completed and looked almost ready to play – it was that that got me really excited about returning to Kananaskis to golf again.
I still play golf with Dad, and we can’t wait to go back and re-create some old memories.