They said he was crazy.
During a recent visit to the Heart River Golf Course, which just recently held their 43rd annual Open Tournament this past weekend, I was able to sit down and talk with one of the leading founders of the golf course.
Tony Mayowski, a longtime Peace Country resident, said that he was first driven to the course after a previous project on the land was abandoned.
“Well, when we started to build this [Golf Course], some had started but were transferred away. So it was just sitting here. Wife and I decided to go down and have a look at it”
When they got to the plot of land that is now known as the beautiful Heart River Golf Course, Mayowski and his family saw an opportunity for something special to happen, and they went to work right away on creating the course.
“We picked roots!” Mayowski explained the hard work and effort that he and his family put into the early stages of the course while facing criticism from people outside the family.
“People said they we were crazy but, pretty soon, one-by-one people start showing up. So, we finally got it down to 3-holes, sand greens, eh!”
Mayowski (Middle) looks on with great pride and appreciation for the course that he helped to build
Sure enough, as they continued to develop the course into what it currently is today, more and more people started to show up. With the popularity of the course starting to rise, more facilities were needed to keep up with growing support. This meant the construction of a new Clubhouse, a process which Mayowski said he had help with from some members of the community.
“One Sunday morning we had a meeting. Quite a few more people had gotten interested. So we’re talking about a Clubhouse. Jon Boucher who owned the saw mill came up and said ‘Well I know where there is lots of lumber,'” Mayowski laughed.
With the lumber supplied, they now had to find someone to build the Trusses for the building, which had a few hiccups in the process.
“So we got started, ordered the trusses, but then the guy who was going to make them phoned and said ‘no I can’t do it’. So an old carpenter who lived down the road, he showed up, pulled out his tape measure out and measured everything and, in one afternoon we had the trusses built and put up! From there we never stopped!
And he was right in saying they never stopped. Mayowski told me that they had as many as 27 hammers going at once during the construction of the clubhouse and that they were able to construct it in just under a week.
As I was interviewing Mayowski about the roots of what he so tirelessly created, I couldn’t help but notice a twinkle in the man’s eye as he looked out at the course today. The cloudy sky had the sun shining down through the cracks of the clouds, the cool wind blowing the trees back and forth throughout the fairway.
“It really makes me proud to sit and look. It was a community thing, it would be a shame not to do it”
They called him crazy for taking on a task so tall but Mayowski trusted his vision and now the fruits of his labour are being enjoyed by countless golfers and residents of the region.
While we can all agree that Tony Mayowski and his family are an inspiration to those who seek out tall tasks, we cannot ignore the community element of the construction. With the help of local carpenters, workers, and saw mill operators, the Heart River community was able to build something that would last decades upon decades, spreading joy to countless generations.
Something we could definitely learn in today’s increasingly individualist world.
-Posted by Preston Hodgkinson
