Founded in 1873, Royal Montreal is the oldest golf club in North America, and many of its regulations are charmingly old fashioned in this 21st-century golf world. For example, golfers can wear shorts, but only in combination with high-top socks.
    
Royal Montreal’s 80,000-square-foot clubhouse, tastefully festooned throughout with first-rate golf memorabilia and illustrations, oozes golf ethos the way Pinehurst does. For all that, its 1,000 members imbue it with an egalitarian atmosphere seldom found at clubs with smaller, more restrictive membership rolls. 
    
Still, it has changed with the times in many aspects, especially with regard to its course. The story begins with eight men convening near the port of Montreal in November 1873. Not surprisingly, the earliest enthusiasts were transplanted Scotsmen, including Alexander Dennistoun, the first president and captain of Royal Montreal, and “founder of golf in North America.” Born in Edinburgh, Dennistoun played Musselburgh and St. Andrews growing up. 
    
In its various incarnations, Royal Montreal has occupied the equivalent of five 18-hole courses and four clubhouses. The first installment was a six-hole course, later nine, at Fletcher’s Field, part of city-owned Mount Royal Park, then on the outskirts of the city. 
    
The first clubhouse was built at the edge of the park, and members embraced the Scottish protocol of wearing red coats while playing, to distinguish themselves from non-golf visitors to the public park. The red coat has remained Royal Montreal’s official ceremonial club garb.
    
Like many in-town tracks, Royal Montreal was squeezed by the burgeoning metropolis and in 1895 moved to Dixie, in the western parish of Dorval, about 10 miles from the city. Its initial 12 holes, opened the following year, soon received six more holes, with another 18-hole layout added in the 1920s. Completion of the second course was closely followed by construction of a new clubhouse.  
    
Ongoing urban sprawl through the 1950s once again dictated a move, and in 1959 Royal Montreal moved to 675 acres of rolling farmland in an old-line Quebec island community, Ile Bizard, in the Lake of the Two Mountains. The late Florida-based golf course architect Dick Wilson won the commission for the club’s two 18-hole courses and its nine-hole track. Royal Montreal, essentially as it exists today, including the clubhouse, was built in two years.
    
In part due to Royal Montreal’s relative head start, club members initially dominated amateur competitions and fostered the growth of the game in the New World. They also staged the first interclub match in North America, against Royal Quebec Golf Club in 1876, as well as the oldest international match, against Massachusetts’ The Country Club in 1898. The inaugural Canadian Ladies Amateur Championship, in 1901, was won by Royal Montreal’s Lily Young.
    
Despite Young’s achievement, the saga of women at Royal Montreal reads like a microcosm of golf’s historic ambivalence toward gender equality. It all started in 1883, when 80 women were invited for tea—but not golf—but they soon progressed to hitting balls. In 1891 the first women became associate members, but according to the club history, “a long contest between the ladies and successive boards of directors for greater recognition and more playing privileges lay ahead.” The debate continues, but at least today women have unrestricted access to previously verboten spaces such as the 19th Hole, the Card Room and the delightfully named Leather Lounge.