Devil's Paintbrush

Few courses in Canada carry a name quite so fitting. Devil's Paintbrush opened in 1992, designed by Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, and was deliberately built to evoke the great heathland courses of Scotland and England — but using the natural glacial terrain of Ontario's Caledon Hills to do it. The result is something genuinely unusual for North America: a walking-only layout routed through stands of fescue, heather, and wildflowers, with rumpled, naturalistic fairways that reward thoughtful shot-making over raw power. The course takes its name from the orange hawkweed wildflower that blankets the property.

Caledon East sits roughly an hour northwest of Toronto in the Greenbelt, a landscape of rolling moraines and kettle lakes that gives Hurdzan and Fry the elevation change and sandy soils they needed to pull off the heathland illusion convincingly. The region's seasons are pronounced — summers warm and green, falls spectacular, winters closing the course entirely.

Devil's Paintbrush has earned consistent recognition among Canada's top public courses, and it carries a reputation as a thinking golfer's track — one where positioning off the tee matters far more than distance, and where the walk itself is half the experience.