The Toronto Golf Club

Etobicoke Lifestyle & Community Samuel M April 22, 2026

Most people driving along the Etobicoke Creek corridor have no idea what's sitting just across the water. The Toronto Golf Club, founded in 1876, is the third-oldest golf club in North America, and it quietly occupies the border between Mississauga and Etobicoke, just west of Alderwood. You'd never guess it from the outside. For residents of the neighbourhood, it's basically a neighbour. For golfers, it's a bucket list course.

Curious about the neighbourhoods that share a fence with history? Explore our guides to Alderwood, Long Branch and the lakeshore.

How it got here

The club didn't start in this location. In the early 1870s, a few friends began hitting the ball around on leased land in east Toronto, and by 1876 the group was formally established. As the city grew around them, they eventually had to move. After Toronto annexed the village of Norway in 1909, the club decided to relocate. By early 1911 it had purchased property near Long Branch and hired Harry Colt to lay out a course. The Colt course opened in the fall of 1912, and a Georgian clubhouse followed in 1913. That clubhouse is still the hub of the club today. The course hasn't changed much either, which is kind of the point.

The Harry Colt course

Harry Colt is the name worth knowing here. Colt, along with partner C.H. Alison, had worked on Sunningdale's Old Course in England, and his 1911 plan for this course is prominently framed in the clubhouse library. The routing uses the Etobicoke Creek valley, and the terrain does the work: genuine elevation changes, heathland character on several holes, and greens that reward patience over aggression. SCOREGolf ranked it Canada's 6th best course in 2024. For a course that's been around since 1912, that's not a legacy rating. It actually plays that well.

More Etobicoke golf:

What the club offers

Members get the 18-hole Colt course, a progressive teaching facility, and a genuine caddie program, increasingly rare in this market. This isn't a club built around amenities or programming. The golf is the draw, and everything else is secondary to that. The club has hosted the Canadian Open five times and the Canadian Amateur Championship nine times, more than any other club in the country. When it hosts, it competes with anything the tour plays anywhere.

What makes it different

A lot of private clubs in the Toronto area are good. This one is in a different conversation. The age of the design matters: Colt built courses that reward course management, not just distance. You read the ground, you think about where you're missing, and you score accordingly. Modern courses don't often ask that of you. The club is also an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary golf course, meaning the environmental stewardship of the creek lands is taken seriously. And it's tied to this corner of the city in a way few institutions are: Alderwood and Long Branch residents have this piece of history as a literal neighbour. Most neighbourhoods can't say that.