Backwards Progress - Challenges of Contemporary Times

Reaching the half-century mark a couple of years back, I've witnessed my share of change; in the communities and societies I have grown up in, in the greater world beyond and the many nations that comprise it, and in my personal life along the journey to now as well.

"Life is about change", as someone at some time or another is undoubtedly credited with having observed along the way, and accordingly that reality is not in itself extraordinary. But if one stops to ponder for a few minutes on the historical changes in technology, lifestyle, societal values and cultural norms that have taken place over the past five decades in Canada, as well as around the world, I think one has to concede the half-century I have lived is pretty mind-boggling in comparison to most if not all earlier generations in human history. 'Survival of the fittest" has taken on a whole new meaning, literally and virtually.

I type today on a wireless keyboard to my IPad, using an App that backs up all my files to an Internet storage location, transmitted wirelessly. When I started College in 1985 we were just starting to see computer labs introduced and most all of my term papers were still done on a typewriter through Under-graduate studies in College and University. If you messed up a page half way down the text, you had to re-type it. There was no auto-correct and a Dictionary on the desk was your best friend in a slow, deliberate key-pecking process. As a child there was one phone in the house and a black and white T.V. made by Zenith. It had 3 channels as I recall. We were allowed one hour of T.V. a night and the rest was time spent on homework or playing outside with friends in the neighbourhood.

Today I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Pinterest and Instagram accounts, to name but a few, and if it weren't for needing to walk the dogs a couple of times a day I likely wouldn't see much of the great out-of-doors at all. Even when I do, I could easily get a half dozen distracted walking tickets a day with my IPhone in hand, practically always. Pretty much all of the familial ties and friendships I have in life are now more virtually present than physically present in my experience of daily living. My 'Social Network' is global today, but my 'Social Circle' seems to have shrunken proportionately. I have a 'small' 32" colour LED flat screen T.V. with at least 30 channels to watch, and I can never find anything I want to see on them. It all seems like a backwards kind of 'progress' to me at times, and in many ways it is! These are also only some of many ways our country and our world has taken one step forward while taking more than two backwards along the journey to now.

As a Missionary's kid in Zambia in the mid to late-60's, my early years were shaped by an environment where being 'white' meant you were in the minority, with gated properties and bars on the house windows being the norm. I have childhood memories of being inside our home when burglarly attempts were in progress. I was then transplanted at the start of the 70's into Southern Alberta, where the kids in the neighbourhood were pretty much all shades of beige. We watched Westerns at Saturday Matinees and then played 'Cowboys and Indians' around the neighbourhood for "fun". The only 'Indians' I actually met in person were ones experiencing hardships, who came to the Manse we lived in looking for lodging and food stamps. The only 'Savages' I ever saw were on horses, dressed up in their war paints and feather head-dresses and riding in the summer Rodeo parades.  The only 'black' guy in the community I knew about was a homeless man I'd see around town from time to time.

I don't recall 'racism' in Africa or feelings in respect to it, perhaps because I was still too young then to understand. I also had parental guidance that respects and champions the equality of all people and the value that each has in teaching and stewarding the commonalities shared between us. I was raised to know that wherever 'racism' exists, it is most certainly wrong and must be challenged.

In contrast to my early years in Africa, I certainly saw and heard no shortage of racism in the communities I lived in on the Prairies during my childhood and in young adulthood while attending College and University. Sadly, as with the 'Cowboys and Indians' games I participated in as a kid, as a young man I even told a few disparaging jokes about 'Natives' as well. It was not until I read and studied the Rolf Inquiry Report, The Manitoba Justice Inquiry Report, and then the subsequent Royal Commission Report on the experience of First Nations peoples within Canada and it's 'majority' Anglo-European inhabitants and Institutions that I really started to appreciate, and feel pathetic about, my part in perpetuating the indoctrination such games and jokes were aimed to serve; namely the denigration and genocide of fellow human beings based solely on skin colour and being defined as a "them" distinct from and inferior to "us".

I ultimately pursued post-secondary studies for eleven years, undertaking a host of courses in law, politics, history and international affairs in respect to First Nations peoples and the Canadian state, to glean an in-depth understanding of the impact of Colonialism and European migration to North America. It is not a historical legacy that any of its ancestors should be particularly proud of in my opinion, and demonstrates hypocrisy to stand on soap boxes professing the 'barbarous' nature and tactics of ones adversaries today. The contempt is clearly well earned from any measured reading of the annals of 'Discovery', 'Settlement' and 'Conquest'.

I certainly came to appreciate through those years of post-secondary studies how naive I had been, and still am today, about the plights that many good people have faced and still face today in Canada, as well as globally, in striving to enjoy the basic needs of Maslow's Hierarchy. I read it reported recently that there are over 50 Million people on Earth today living in Refugee Camps! Are you kidding me? That is more people than live in Canada, by another third at least! In Canada the evening news regularly features stories month to month, year in and year out, decade on decade, about the third-world conditions many First Nations peoples continue to live in within their communities, with no or minimal basic services available.

It is a sadly observable reality that while 'progress' may have been made in leaps and bounds in technology, when it comes to achieving a 'civilized' global community it is most definitely stunted, if there has indeed been any 'progress' in my life-time. Canada is lagging well behind the curve of where it should be for the pronouncements it makes in support of Human Rights in Canada and internationally. It is unacceptable failure and a perpetual example of hollow words and unfulfilled values to my reckoning, and based on many an official governmental inquiry report and tribunal decision rendered over the decades as well!

When I was a lad looking out at the awe-inspiring starlit nights on the Prairies I recall feeling the fear and contemplating the very real threat and the 'doom's day' propaganda of that era; namely Nuclear devastation of the Planet. I spent many a night falling to sleep, or not falling to sleep, thinking about what I would do if ever the news came, and looking and listening for planes coming in the night sky from our Russian neighbours to the North. Today that threat and the fear associated with it still exists, but it has been muted by the "War on Terror", and the more recent sensationalism and barbarism in beheadings of hostages to serve a defined 'Extremist' group's political, social and, purportedly, religious aims. In more recent months tensions in Ukraine and global tensions between Russia and the 'West' rip scabs from latent childhood fears of mass devastation. I can well imagine children today are falling asleep, or not falling asleep, the world over with one eye a bit less tightly shut than before all this nonsense took centre stage again as adversarial events and regional conflicts within the global community wax and wane, and wax again.

ALL of my life's education and experiences impress on me ever-more each day that OUR collective problem as humans is OUR propensity to focus on the differences that define a narrowly conceived and constructed 'US' rather than the commonalities that do exist and can serve to harmonize a global WE and serve aims that are in OUR common interests as fellow human beings on Earth.

There have been an enormous number of past, and present, injuries that have been and are being perpetuated in defence and defiance of states, races, ethnic or religious identities that in some way or another claim 'insult' and 'persecution' as the measure of the justness for their atrocities and to rationalize root causes for their hostilities and violent aggression. The motives in reality were and are most definitely all driven at the core by human greed and primal survival urges for 'supremacy', and by it the achievement of physical and economic security of ways and means to better ends than what people had before.

It should be clear by now that the rush to 'progress' at any cost has and is exacerbating and not marginalizing the distinctions between US and ensures that WE cannot ever get past acting out our humanity's "Grumpy Amygdala" like our cave dwelling ancestors; with a destructive and vicious reaction to each new insult and injury triggering mob insecurity and absurdity the world-over of one form or another in one group or another every day of the year!

Mass candle-light ceremonies following the most crushing atrocities affecting the collective human psyche are an example to my mind of Humanity's capacity to achieve brotherly love, tolerance and compassion the world over. I have witnessed such mass movements on nightly news casts in recent weeks that have included countries in a diversity of regions and on different continents standing up for equality, justice and the virtues of respect within our shared human community, and standing in protest of those who would try to utilize fear to achieve divisive, destructive and audacious means for political and 'Extremist' ends. The will of the masses is most certainly there to over-come the grievances of the marginalized and disenfranchised, but the leadership to date is devoid of actions that are genuinely intended to achieve mutually advantageous resolutions and outcomes.

There is a seminar being held presently in Washington, hosted by President Obama, that is addressing the very real concern of 'Extremist' movements throughout the world. I applaud the initiative if the intent is to gain greater understanding of the concerns of one's adversaries and if a genuine interest in seeking their win/win resolution is the guiding intention. Otherwise, it is akin to having a conversation while the Elephant is out of the room. It's flaw is in thinking it will arrive at possible resolutions absent of the offended parties and instead only perpetuates the opportunities for Intellectuals and military strategists to sit around agreeing with themselves about their interpretation of how others feel and why they are acting the way they are and doing the things they are doing because of it.

Lets face it, my Canada and my world are not the nice, welcoming, caring, secure and 'progressive' environments they should be for all the human knowledge and international principles and proclamations that exist in print that we and all nations are signatories to. WE need to get better at practicing what is agreed to and holding our leadership accountable to support the values and pronouncements of Human Rights, rather than think they have a mandate to amend them to their defined group's interests.

To my mind the usefulness of political parties has outgrown itself in the contemporary era. Smart Canadians need to sit down and think about how fellow Canadians can be better served than through an adversarial political system designed to perpetually stimulate conflict and confrontation and take valuable time and energy away from cooperation and collaboration in the day-to-day affairs of those elected to represent further micronized communal interests. With a business approach, we need to undertake a 'Situation Analysis' and work through a process of consensus building to achieve a renewed Mission and Vision, along with an agreed-upon direction for the country and its citizenry that can be voted upon through trust-worthy and transparent on-line election processes.

There is an opportunity existing today for Canada to renew its historical reputation as a peace-keeping nation, with an international rainbow of citizens proudly comprising its societal and cultural mosaic. WE need a process that achieves an updated 'Social Contract' and a renewed commitment to walk-the-walk on internationally agreed-upon Human Rights principles and declarations. In so doing it can provide an example of the possible and a testament to it for the rest of the global community.

WE as Canadians need to focus our collective energies with a renewed sense of urgency and priority on achieving acceptable living conditions for all Canadians in communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast; with basic services of electricity, water and sewage systems, adequate housing, schools and employment opportunities. WE need to ensure that the people of our northern regions can receive their goods and services at reasonable costs comparative to all southern regions of the country, and that they can receive their governance and justice in ways that best serves their communities as well. We need to address homelessness and addiction with compassion, to aid and nurture recovery and reintegration. Restorative justice needs greater exercise in achieving genuine resolution of some crimes and offences as well. In reality the whole Justice system needs extensive reform to achieve restorative rather than punitive Justice aims. Holistically, WE need to renew our commitment to 'Good Governance'; binding it less to 'Institutions' designed to control people and attaching it primarily instead to serving the 'Greater Good' by adapting and modifying the institutions and tools of governance to meet that objective.

WE have had enough experience with looking forward while taking steps backwards as a country and as a global community. WE need leadership that genuinely cares about the fellow human beings they serve. WE need to strive diligently to utilize tools such as the Economy to achieve the 'Greater Good' through renewed instruments of 'Good Governance', rather than the self-interests of the wealthy, political and military 'elite' that today make it quite clear they have not earned OUR trust and confidence to steer OUR course forward well, nor seem to be genuinely trying to do so with much earnest.

That is what I will be looking for from those who want my vote in coming Federal and Provincial elections. I am a champion of change after five decades of experiencing it, so long as it for the better, and not a continuation of OUR backwards 'progress' simply dressed in renewed rhetoric that is rooted in divisiveness and promotion of a 'fear' agenda.


Andrew Gilchrist B.A., C.C.M.

Member of the Canadian Society of Club Managers since 2002
Internationally accredited Certified Club Manager (C.C.M.)

Perplexed by Instinct and 'The Voice'

What's with that inside voice of ours anyway? You know the one, you are listening to it right now read and process these written words in your head. When you look away, it is the same voice you hear saying, "I wonder where he is going with this? Maybe I should just stop reading now. Oh, look, a bird, how pretty."

But most people will come back to read on, because that voice in our heads has an insatiable desire to pursue the unknown at times, or so it seems to me, even though that most bizarre of human characteristics, 'Instinct', tells the voice to click the back button on the search engine and return to following other links for something more enlightening. Truth be known, enlightenment is not my aim as much as reflection is.

If one considers how often we hear from our mind's voice on a daily basis, it surely must be appropriate from time to time to ponder a while on what it is saying and how it is demonstrating its effectiveness to guide our lives and the decisions in them in order to avoid dangers to our well-being and pitfalls along the journey of life. Is it a voice we should more often than not be listening to, or is it one that we should be wary of and seek others' opinion on before acting on the feelings, observations and conclusions rendered from it? You have likely heard the expression, "trust your instinct, it won't let you down", but is that true in all cases, or even in most cases, or are we more often deluding ourselves into bad choices by following our gut instincts in the decisions we make while living our daily lives?

There have been occasions in my life when I feel that my instincts definitely saved me from personal harm or death, perhaps mixed with some good fortune and luck as well. There are other occasions when following my instincts has lead to uncomfortable, frustrating and physically or financially damaging outcomes, at least in the short term and if it were not for good fortune and a bit of luck I would likely be much worse off today than I am.

From time to time in life I have felt an instinct to purchase a lottery ticket from a specific store on a particular day, but that has never born financial abundance as instinct suggested it would with the idea of purchasing the ticket. One might argue that the purchasing of a lottery ticket is more of an impulse than an instinct. My view is that an impulse is a spontaneous act, while instinct are driven by a sense that to do so will be good for you or provide something good for you and involves premeditation for specific action to achieve predetermined results, be that relatively instantaneous or longer in duration between the mind's thought and action. The lottery ticket is purchased on impulse after the instinct has been introduced by the mind's voice as something that should be done today to improve one's life and lifestyle opportunities for the future. Instinct has not been my friend trying to strike it rich.

By contrast, from time to time in life I have had an instinct to walk into a specific business, store or restaurant and in doing so either found a job I was looking for, found an item I had been looking for, or met a person that became important somehow to my journey in life. Of course I have walked into far more businesses, stores and restaurants when that has not happened, but the timeliness of certain occasions over the past three decades has made me feel that my instinct was the impetus for the discovery made at that point in my life's journey. My instinct tells me as I write to believe that to be true, even though it knows full well that it has failed me more frequently than it should have along the journey to now as well.

Is there a magical formula for knowing when to follow one's instinct and when to quiet the inside voice? The straight forward answer I believe is, no. All I think one can do is trust it for so long as you feel upon reflection that the choices it guides you to are the outcomes you thought you were going to achieve with the actions taken, and you are happy with the results. If that is not the case, then stop following your instinct and spend more time in thought and reflection, as well as doing research and seeking advice from others who are likely to know better what is best to do in your circumstances.

Either way, you are the one who is responsible for your life, and the decisions you make in it. Your instinct can either be your best friend or your worst enemy and it’s important to reflect on how well it has been serving you periodically to make sure it is producing the intended fruit of your actions and is serving your well-being and best interests optimally. What is your mind's voice telling you today? Are you worthy of better? Can you do better? Is being worthy of or doing better relevant or important to your circumstances at all? For most of us humans, I think it likely is on any given day.

I read once that, "High expectations equal high results and low expectations equal no results". I have high expectations for my mind's voice and I expect that it will never steer me wrong. I know that a few times it has, but on the whole I am impressed with its results. So, I choose to listen to my instincts a vast majority of the time in life, and accept the consequences of my decisions as they come. I don't always like the outcomes, and that's when I know for sure that my instincts were off. Or, perhaps the instincts were right but my luck was bad. Either way, the outcomes from time to time are not what I had planned for or hoped would be the result. It is then that I have to begin at a new starting point and trust new instincts to guide future decisions about what comes next in coming weeks and months beyond.

Life has its fair share of perplexities and really should come with a much better instruction manual than it does. For all of humanity's intelligence, inventions and advancements, one would think a "How to be a Human for Dummies" manual would have been written long before now; recognizing that humans are dummies more often than not. It would have been great if I had been better prepared in my earlier years for how to manage my instincts over the decades for optimal gains, rather than the trial and error that has been my course on the pathway to now. It would have been time much better spent in high school to be studying the history and intimate workings of instinct and how to use it in my life effectively rather than to be reading and talking for several classes Romeo & Juliet, I am pretty much certain!

Be that as it may, the years of living with that voice have certainly taught me that it is not perfect. My analogy with Golf is that one's Instinct is like one's Driver. If you know how to play it, it can be a valuable tool to have in life's bag, but sometimes the fairway you are facing is more wisely traversed with a 3 Wood, 5 Wood or a Hybrid from the tee. So, when you are standing on the tee box and are about to grab the Driver in life, before you start your back swing just take that extra second to ask yourself whether the terrain you can see before you is forgiving enough to allow for some degree of error, or whether it might be wiser to choose a more reliable and certain club from your available arsenal. If it still feels right, then grip it 'n rip it! With risks there are opportunities for reward, but the most important factor is keeping your ball in play.

Perplexed by Some Golfers in Canada

As a golf course and club General Manager/Chief Operating Officer, Food & Beverage Manager, and Banquets Manager I have had the unique opportunity during my management career to garner an appreciation for both the public and private sides of the golf industry; the past five years running a public golf course and multi-use recreation area, and the ten years prior to that managing private and semi-private golf clubs. It has been a wonderful career to date, filled with a host of anecdotal tales to tell that have occured while managing and facilitating the delivery of products and services to thousands upon thousands of golfers and clubhouse patrons over the past decade and a half. Some day I may well write a Sit Com about those many memories and stories.

At tournaments, banquets, meetings, weddings, funeral receptions, private functions, annual holiday events, as well as in the daily use and enjoyment of the courses, amenities and services of the properties I have managed, where there are people there are destined to be perplexing ones lurking amongst them. When alcohol is involved, their numbers multiply. While the vast majority of the thousands upon thousands of people I have met and served have been wonderful, the golf industry from my experience of it certainly also provides its fair share of folks who have made me shake my head and question whether evolution is really occuring.  I can think of several who have most definitely in my mind earned the distinction of being strong contenders for Darwin Awards, and a number of others that are only slightly less deserving.

I won't get into names (sorry), but I do want to identify a few personality types of golfers within the golf clubs and communities I have served that I believe are reflective of the dispositions of similarly natured golfers at other courses and clubs across the country. There needs to be serious effort given to exterminating these types within the cultures of clubs across the country where they may exist, since their presence is insidious to the morale of the employee cadre, and often annoying to their fellow members and patrons as well. It is also cancerous to the achievement of communal unity in respect to the mutual interest of living with pride in the golf community for its course and club, and with respect for the people who work each day to make it possible for the game to be enjoyed and the services to be provided throughout each season.

The Golf Egoists

These are the golfers that one would think by listening to them, the world revolves around and could not live on without, but for their self-proclaimed expertise. Forget that a golf course is a living, breathing organism with its natural cycles of waxing and waning from season's start to end, or that because of those cycles annual maintenance programs and routines need to be completed for the health of turf to be enjoyed by thousands of golfers on every course all season long. Forget that there is a professionally trained Turf Care Management team in place in virtually all clubs today to deal with its good care, maintenance and upkeep.

The Golf Egoists are only able to see the world through lenses that reflect back at them as the only important thing or person in any and all circumstances. They judge everything within the instant they are experiencing it and give little to no consideration to what practical needs or limitations may lay behind their experienced inconvenience or dissatisfaction before they decide it's worthy of giving a manager or front-line employee a verbal tongue lashing over it.

It's like Ground Hog Day in clubhouses across the nation each spring I am certain, when 'Mr. Gripester' hunts down the Manager, Superintendent, Golf Pro and whoever else he can get to listen. He's predictably going to begin with some ramblings about his extensive expertise in golf course aeration practices and the lack of need for them, and then proceed to condemn the personnel doing it as inept bafoons who wouldn't likely be able to dress in the morning without his guidance. He doesn't say as much, but by his annual criticisms about the "crater sized holes" on the greens he certainly infers it.

News flash Golf Egoists, it's not just for you that we do the things we do; we prepare the course for thousands of players every season, not just for your rounds on it! Aeration, top-dressing and over-seeding programs, along with verticutting and fertilizer, fungicide and limited pesticide programs are an annual part of what it takes to appropriately condition a golf course and they are scheduled pretty consistently from year to year. Get used to it and stop complaining every spring and summer about the aeration of the greens, tee boxes and fairways already! You cannot maintain healthy turf conditions on high traffic greens, tee boxes and fairways without aeration practices as part of your course conditioning standards, it's as simple as that. It ideally needs to happen twice a year, every year.

If it bugs you that much to live through some bumpy greens for a couple of weeks, go fishing or go to the Range. Don't come to the course and Clubhouse to saturate us with your predictable discontent and contempt for this annual practice. Stay home and address the Honey Do Jar if you must but please, be somewhere other than where you can pollute the positive culture of the club and the energy of our team's days by casting aspersions on their good works and deflating their motivation through your perpetual grumblings. The holes should be completely filled in within a couple of weeks or so with decent weather and you can come back then, to undoubtedly complain about the pin placements, too fast or two slow of green speeds, and/or a lack of sand or poorly raked bunkers for most of the rest of your rounds during the remainder of the season instead.

If you must think that all of the course maintenance practices have been purposefully scheduled to offend your personal golf outing plans, at least get creative in coming up with some new things to complain about. The employee cadre is most certainly all too familiar with and fatigued by the Golf Egoists typical list of disgruntlements. Perhaps use that time window when the greens are recovering to take some lessons from a Golf Pro, so we can all get more enjoyment out of your use of the course and its amenities in the future.

The 'Loco-When-Parentless'

It was during a hot stretch of days in July of 2008, with day after day of blue skies and temperatures mid day exceeding 25C. It was to the point for me personally, and I think for lots of others, that rain would have been a welcome relief from the heat and humidity and there were no shortage of minds praying for it, I'm sure. I got an email one afternoon from a patron, a Doctor he claimed no less, who was infuriated that he had not seen the beverage cart on the back 9 of the course for the two hours he was out there that afternoon. He asserted that the golf course was responsible for the fact that he and his playing buddies came off the course in a state of physical dehydration as a result. We had risked their lives in the heat, as his argument went, by not ensuring that the beverage cart provided them service during the course of the back 9 holes of their round.

The beverage cart, as it turned out, was never able to catch up with that particular foursome on the back 9 that day. She was kept too busy with a tournament group on the front 9 of the course and did not see all the groups on the course on both 9s as a result. The lack of service, as disappointing as it may have been, is one thing. To assert that a golf course or club and its employees somehow have a responsibility to fulfill a parental role of ensuring that grown-ups, Doctor's no less, take enough water in their golf bags to ensure hydration when they plan to go out and play in the heat of the day during a heat streak was then, and is now, absurd! This is just one example of many I can offer of golfers and patrons who seem to turn off their brains when they drive in through the front gate.

Mother Nature is not to be triffled with, there have been examples of that on the nightly news since the invention of the television. If the golf course does not, the Clubhouse surely does provide water, whether it be for free or for sale. If you think you will need it, get some. Every golf bag I have seen for decades has side pockets on it, all power carts have beverage holders in them and the pull carts typically do as well. Load up before you leave the Clubhouse with what you will need for H2O, and don't blame others for the responsibility over your personal health and well being when you are out playing your sport of choice in the mid-day's sun; take charge of it yourself!

The beverage cart is a service to enhance food & beverage sales on a golf course, it is not a mobile first aid kiosk. It can and has provided that service as well at times no doubt, but it is not the primary reason for its utilization in daily operations and should not be relied upon as such. There is no course I have ever worked at or played at in thirty-seven years that has published a guarantee of beverage cart service on both 9s of every round. While that is the aim, it cannot be guaranteed for a variety of unpredictable potential disruptions to its service delivery; from vehicle mechanical issues to staffing shortages, or workplace health and safety reasons related to weather or other factors. Golfers are responsible for their own hydration and well-being on their rounds, not the beverage cart girls!

Playing golf in thunder storms is another one that also never ceases to baffle me; recreation golfers out risking their lives for the sake of a little white ball and a score on the card that they will likely either embelish on or commiserate about with friends and peers when they back to work anyway, and within a month or less they likely wont recall without referencing their score card again, unless they had a banner round going when the storm arrived. I have loved, lived and played golf for thirty-seven years, but I have never understood that behaviour. Testing the timing of arrival of an approaching storm is a fool's game.

I read in one article several years back that lightning can travel forward or backward of a storm as far as 10 kms. If you can hear thunder and see lightning anywhere near you, pick up the ball, seek cover, have a bite to eat and a beverage in the clubhouse, and live to play another day. I do consider it my responsibility as a golf course operator, if not legally then at least ethically, to constantly monitor the weather and to ensure as early a warning as possible to players if/when a storm system is approaching. With that said, as a Golfer, I also know that when I am out playing I am responsible for my own health and well-being, as at any other time in daily living; I wouldn't dream of delegating that much responsibility for me and my personal safety to others. Neither should you! Today there are weather radar apps that can be downloaded on all smart phones. Know the conditions expected for the day you are playing on, and be conscious of forecasted storm warnings. At the end of the day, "I didn't hear the horn" or "it really didn't look that bad" are really pathetic lines to read on a tomb stone.

The 'Rules Renegades'

These are the guys and gals at every course and in every club that quite simply choose either not to know or, as more often is the case in my experience, choose to blatantly break and disregard the established and published policies and rules that govern their use and enjoyment of the golf course and club assets to suit their personal preferences. These ones can, and often do, fill a General Manager's day, and often several days and weeks thereafter; dealing first with the discovery or reporting of their infractions, and then the resulting processes, communications, and often times adversarial interactions that are generated from them to censure the offender and try and correct the breaches in acceptable and appropriate conduct in the future.

News Flash Rules Renegades, there are policies and rules for the good governance and management of thousands of peoples' products and services needs over each golf season at courses and clubs nation-wide. There are also various Acts and regulations set by external governing entities such as municipalities, provinces and the Federal government that serve to mandate and define policy and rules needs and perameters.

When you pay a green fee, purchase a pass or buy a membership, it is your duty and responsiblity to know and to adhere to those policies and rules during your use and enjoyment of the communal asset. It is not your duty and responsibility to blatantly ignore them or test the perameters of what is acceptable or not acceptable by looking for ways to work around the spirit and intent of the instructions.

There are processes to affect desired change that is in the interest of the majority, while protecting the interests of minorities, within the internal workings of every golf course and its club's governance policies. Get to know about them and utilize them to produce change if you desire it, but do not think that simply flouting the policy or rule is okay somehow. It is not!

Every member and patron to my way of thinking has purchased rights to group-identified and defined privileges, but also has responsibilities in the enjoyment of those privileges. Primary among them is the duty to ensure that as members and patrons they are not serving to contribute to the creation of an uncomfortable work-place environment for the employees hired to serve them. It is the duty of every employer to ensure that its employees enjoy a comfortable workplace environment, and when you decide it's your place as a member of a Club to break the rules and disregard or argue with corrective measures from the employees charged with enforcing the policies and rules of the Club they serve, you are contributing to that unpleasant work-place environment.

Most of the people using golf courses and clubs in Canada are adults, or supervised by one. It would be great if the proportion of Golfers who respect the rules and their employees, as well as their courses and clubs, could see significant growth in years to come. There needs to be a renaissance in appropriate decorum and etiquette to match the "gentlemenly" history and traditions of Golf from my experience noticing its decline over the past two decades.

Rules Renegades need to be more firmly disciplined to discourage their proliferation and impact on the positive and harmoneous culture of the community. It would be even better if more Golfers lived their duties and responsibilities in the life of their courses and clubs in such as way as to ensure they don't breach policies and rules they have a duty to know and adhere to, which produces the need for them to be censured in the first place. My duties as a General Manager/Chief Operating Officer would be so much more enjoyable, and I would also likely enjoy greater longevity at a club, if I were not so often placed in the position of having to fulfill the policy and rules enforcer mandate within my job description with members who should and most often do know that what they did was not okay according to the policies and rules of the Club they joined.

There is a fundamental incompatability in the combined mandate of any employee of a Club to achieve objectives of excellence in quality service to members and to also enforce policies and rules with those we serve. It is inevitable that eventually sufficient numbers accumulate who are disgruntled for getting their wrists slapped at one time or another and can't move past that with an appreciation for the fact that they were responsible for the original infraction(s) and reason(s) they came to dislike you and your handling of their policy or rules misconduct in the first place.

Simply put, to my way of thinking the employees of a club cannot and should not be expected to be its policy and rules enforcers. Recognizing that is a controversial position to take, it is no less my experienced opinion that the volunteers who are leading the organization as the elected representatives of their memberships need to take accountablility for the policing, judgment and adjudication of complaints and infractions related to policy and rules breaches by fellow members and their guests.

Systems and processes need to be modified in clubs if they do not already exist today that remove the organization's employees, inclusive of its management personnel, from the onus and responsibility to take any action beyond reporting the policy or rules breach to the Club Captain or Membership Committee Chairman. Continuing to utilize an administrative process that involves the organizations management and/or staff in the censuring of members' misconduct is akin to allowing a dog to bite the hands of its masters. After enough teeth impressions, the hands decide to stop feeding. They have only themselves to blame for habits formed and their resulting injuries from invitiing it, but ultimately it is the dog that ends up paying for it the most.

It is the membership that establishes and sets the rules for the use and enjoyment of a Club, and it is the membership that needs to be responsible for the communal adherence to and enforcement of the policies and rules they establish for their communal use and enjoyment of their Club. It may be uncomfortable at times for fellow members to sit in judgment and discipline of one another, but that is the very peer nature of a group of people coming together in a Club for collectively agreed-upon communal objectives and purposes. There are no shortage of members more than willing to judge and report on the misconduct of their peers with a poor organizational model and associated policies in place that has encouraged them to wipe their hands of their disgruntlements once they take them to the General Manager to be dealt with, and then to typically be disgruntled further when it isn't addressed in the manner they thought it should have been.

Don't leave it up to the hired help to resolve your membership's relationship issues; that is not what our time is best spent focused on. We are there to organize, manage and facilitate the delivery of a quality conditioned golf course, along with products and services to you. You are there to establish, adopt and live by the communal policies and rules that you as a group decide on for your Club and agree to when you join one, and you need to be responsible to make sure that all amongst you live by your Club's creed. Passing that duty off through delegation to your hired help only encourages potentially negative experiences to adversly shape and impact the daily relationships between your members and your management and staff in the use and enjoyment of the Club's amenities.

If you as a Golfer identify yourself within the above noted personality types, it's time to change your ways! If you as a member of a club can recognize any of these personality types within your membership, it's time for you to do something about it!

Good, hard-working and devoted employees leave clubs because of negative club cultures that allow for the presence of uncomfortable work-place conditions, and so do members. You have a duty to your organization's employees and to your fellow members to ensure that those who you welcome into your ranks follow the policies and rules you have established for your Club. To do less is to invite decay in the quality of the experience for all and serves to weaken the social fabric in the Club, as well as the perceived value in acquiring and keeping membership in it.

Don't pass the buck to your employees. Members are likely to be kept in check and a harmonious Club culture achieved as a consequence  far more effectively if they know it is a jury of their peers that will adjudicate and met out discipline for their misconduct as opposed to a Paper Tiger process by delegating membership relationship management to the Club's hired help.

Remember that Golf is a game, and belonging to a Club is a choice. With that choice come privileges as well as responsibilities. It would be great to see a growth in the numbers of members and patrons who live theirs in the daily life of their courses and clubs and in their interactions with the employees hired to deliver on their products and services needs and desires.

Perplexed by the Politics of Nordic Skiing on Golf Courses in Canada

I must confess to being quite perplexed by the politics between some Golfers and some Nordic Skiers I've been exposed to in recent years. I really don't get the resistance in many golf communities to allowing Nordic tracks to be set for cross-country skiing on the acres upon acres of prime parkland that many golf courses enjoy in municipalities across the country, be they public courses, semi-private or private clubs.

I should note, I am not a Nordic skier, nor am I particularly well connected with any Nordic skiers or ski clubs. Rather, I am a seasoned golf club/course General Manager/C.O.O., having spent six years running a private and then a semi-private club, followed by a public golf course for the past five years that is also a Nordic ski venue in the winter months.

To me the Golf and Nordic ski seasons are complimentary to the business interests of a sporting and social club in Canada, not in conflict with one another. Provided that both groups respect one another and provided some parameters around the acceptable use and enjoyment of the property are established to protect the turf and Nordic set track conditions in each respective season, there is no reason the two sports cannot co-exist on the same property harmoniously. To my way of thinking, it is in fact beneficial to the financial and membership interests of clubs and public golf course properties to expand available services to potential share holders and patrons and utilize the full calendar year to generate revenues for the property from the land and amenities provided on it.

Let's face realities, Golf is at best a six month sport in most parts of Canada, from mid-April to mid-October most years. Nordic skiing is realistically about a five month sport; it typically being mid-November by the time there is sufficient snow accumulated to set Classic or Skate tracks and more often than not by mid April there is too much ice and grass showing to maintain the tracks further.

For Golfers, the primary argument I have heard against having Nordic skiing on the golf course is that the set ski tracks damage turf and leave unsightly wear areas on the course come spring as a result of the compaction of snow above it over an extended period. There is little question, in discussing the concern with turf grass experts, that the fragility of grasses on greens and tee boxes can be impacted by snow compaction if oxygen cannot get to the grass under the compacted area for a period of six to eight weeks prior to its exposure to the air again in the spring. It doesn't take a lot of man hours to set up snow fence around eighteen greens and tee boxes to keep people off them if need be, but appropriate planning and routing of the tracks set can prevent a vast majority of skiing and snow shoeing enthusiasts from having any negative impact on the quality of turf on the course come late April each year.

Appropriate track routing ensures that there is consideration given to where any potential wear areas may occur on the course come the spring, and prevents any intersections with fairways that would occur within a distance range that the average golfer would be hitting their tee shot; from 120 yards to 300 yards from the tee. Ensuring that set tracks intersect the course at strategic points and utilizing paved or gravel cart paths can minimize any turf damage and negative aesthetic impacts.

The reality of most grasses on the fairways of Canadian golf courses is that they are resilient. It is grass, and clubs have professionally trained employees who know how to grow it, and re-grow it or re-sod areas as need may arise in the spring. It seems to me rather absurd to turn away patrons and revenue potential for five months of every year just to save a bit of grass from getting compacted for a few months. If there is a bit of damage, so be it. I have seen some pretty badly damaged turf on golf courses every spring caused by mowers leaking hydraulic fluid, or improperly set blades or inexperienced operators shaving the ground down to the soil. There are service roads for course maintenance vehicles across all golf courses, and in inclement weather course equipment causes turf damage and leaves ruts that take weeks to heal and/or man hours and resources to repair.

I can pretty much guarantee you Golfers damage at least ten times more turf every golf season than any Nordic ski season ever will. Every season courses and clubs incur unnecessary grounds and course maintenance expenses from Golfers driving carts in areas where they are not supposed to be, by driving aggressively on saturated turf, by taking divots and not replacing them or not filling the cavity with sand & seed mix, or by not repairing ball marks on greens. At least the wear areas produced by set tracks compaction will grow back and disappear by mid June with appropriate Course Condition Standards that include aeration, top dressing and over-seeding programs. The damage done by far too many inconsiderate and disrespectful Golfers to their own courses every year, all season long, in my opinion gives few a right to indignation over perceived turf damages when there is three feet of snow on the ground.

Many club across this country today are experiencing membership attraction and retention concerns. Those can be mitigated if clubs begin to more openly embrace the fact that we live in a Nordic country and for at least four to six months every year golf courses offer acres upon acres of stellar parkland terrain that is otherwise sitting in dormancy. More inclusive and respectful attitudes can stimulate increased year-round enjoyment of courses and their amenities and can provide an additional five months in each calendar year to sell products and services to members and patrons who appreciate being welcome in all the seasons of the year.