Former Myrtle Point Golf Club pro Cec Ferguson will be inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame of BC at a dinner to be held on Thursday, October 27 at Capilano Golf and Country Club in West Vancouver.
Selection to the Hall of Fame, located on the UBC (University of BC) Endowment Lands in Vancouver and the only independent golf museum and library in North America, is restricted to those who have brought honour to themselves and their province through their competitive accomplishments.
Ferguson certainly has the credentials and he will enter with other inductees including Dawn Coe-Jones, Jim Rutledge and deceased golfers Bob Kidd and Walter McElroy.
He is particularly pleased to celebrate the award with Rutledge, a golfer he introduced to his first Canadian tour.
“I quit playing golf from 1969 to 1973 and I played fastball for Labbatts,” said Ferguson.
“My coach was Grant Rutledge, Jim’s dad, and Jim was just a little squirt of a junior,” he laughed.
“When I came back and played amateur golf for four years, Jim became a pretty good junior and turned professional in 1977.
“There’s a relationship with Jim and I think that’s kind of neat,” he said.
Ferguson was the winner of the Victoria Junior, Island Junior, and Victoria City Amateur in 1973, 1974 and 1975. He was a winner of the BC Open as an amateur in 1976, a member of the Commonwealth Team in 1975, a member of three Willingdon Cup teams, winner of the Saskatchewan Open, a three-time BC PGA champion, a BC match play winner and a Canadian PGA Club Professional Championship winner in 1986.
He visited Powell River many times through his friendship and fundraising efforts with Bruce Denniston, his best friend from his high school days. Ferguson made his stay permanent after recruitment by Hector Beauchesne to Myrtle Point from Quilchena Golf and Country Club in Richmond, to help with the transition to the new course.
“I came up for a couple of years at the old golf course for a pro-am to raise funds for a bone marrow registry,” explained Ferguson.
“Then Hector and I got to know each other,” added Ferguson, “and he came down and told me about this new golf course they were building and the opportunity came up to manage the new one and shut the old one down.”
While his tenure in Powell River was very smooth, his first flight in was anything but.
“I was in the very back of the plane,” he remembered as if it were yesterday, “right next to the emergency door and I stepped out.”
“I was outside saying ‘come on folks,’” and he said emphatically, “I certainly wasn’t staying in the plane.”
Ferguson, now general manager of Vernon Golf and Country Club, resided in Powell River for about seven years and moved away with fond memories of the city.
“The people are outstanding,” he said, “and we had a tremendous amount of fun.
“The first person I made friends with was Daryl Smith of Pacific Coastal Airlines,” he recalled, “and the combination of him and my friends at Helijet Airways allowed us to fly people in from all over for all sorts of different things.”
Golf has given Ferguson many opportunities to rub shoulders with celebrities and host a myriad of events that have enriched his life.
“Golf provides you with so many life skills,” he explained, “and a whole gamut of organizational skills, marketing skills and everything that you would require to run a successful business.”
“I like to think that I truly have friends who are celebrities,” he added, “and we don’t treat each other differently.
“We’re just a bunch of good guys that like each other for what we do.”
Ferguson is a man who would trade his celebrity for a chance get together with old friends and he was thrilled to hear some of his old friends from Powell River were planning to attend the event.
