Willows Golf Course

Sandspit sits at the northern tip of Haida Gwaii, the remote archipelago off British Columbia's northwest coast, and it's one of the more unlikely addresses for a golf course anywhere in Canada. The islands, long known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, are a place of towering Sitka spruce, ravens, and tidal flats — a landscape shaped as much by Pacific storms and First Nations history as by anything else. Getting here means a ferry crossing or a small-plane flight, which tells you something about the kind of golfer who ends up teeing it up.

Willows Golf Course serves the small community of Sandspit, the only significant settlement on Moresby Island, home to the Haida Gwaii Airport and a population measured in the hundreds. A course like this one exists for the locals first — a place to play on summer evenings when the light lingers remarkably late this far north, and where the rough is as much about the surrounding wilderness as any design intention.

Expect a relaxed, unhurried round where the scenery does the heavy lifting. Wildlife sightings and ocean air are part of the deal, and the sheer improbability of playing golf this deep in the Pacific Northwest adds a memorable dimension that no rating system adequately captures.