Mayfield Golf Club Legacy (1978-2024): Stories of Dreams, Determination, and Community

Dreams, like empty spaces, wait to be measured by those who dare to fill them. In 1941, standing barely five-foot-seven in patched clothes with a second-hand club, Gordon de Laat looked across Toronto’s golf landscapes and saw something others missed – the distance between what was and what could be.

The Depression had taught most people to lower their expectations. It taught Gordon to raise his aims. While others learned to accept limitations, he discovered an unlikely truth: that the gap between circumstances and dreams wasn’t a barrier, but a blueprint. Each setback, each “no,” each closed door became another measurement in a plan that would take 37 years to unfold.

In 1955, Gordon de Laat found his opportunity – a piece of land suitable only for grazing cattle, miles from Toronto’s city limits. Where others saw worthless acreage, Gordon saw possibility. The very limitations that made the land affordable would become the foundation of something extraordinary. By 1978, that modest cattle pasture had transformed into Mayfield Golf Club.

For 46 years, it stood as a testament to seeing possibility in empty spaces – a reminder that dreams, like determined seedlings, find ways to flourish even in unlikely soil.

Mayfield was never just one man’s vision—it became the story of every sunrise round, every twilight putt, and every friendship forged between them. What began as a dream in a cattle pasture grew into something extraordinary: a community that understood dreams become possible through the willingness to work toward them.

Too often, when businesses close, their stories fade away. This cannot happen to Mayfield. Share your memories, photos, and connections. Help us preserve memories and moments that defined who we became – a community that turned possibility into reality.