In the early 1890s, ladies at three of the most senior clubs in the country – Royal Montreal, Royal Quebec, and Toronto – were forming ladies’ golf clubs, electing officers, and soon residing in their own clubhouses, with women making up nearly half the membership of the main club. The first interclub match in North America between teams of female golfers was played at Cove Fields, Quebec on 31st May 1894, when the home team heavily defeated the visitors from Montreal by 33 holes.

By the turn of the century, the hub of interclub golf was Toronto, where around twenty clubs were in easy reach of each other. In April 1897, the ladies of Toronto Golf Club invited s joint team of ten Montreal and Quebec ladies to play a combined team from Toronto and Rosedale, resulting in a victory for the away team by 17 holes to 14. In the return match played over Royal Montreal’s new course at Dixie in October the same year, “Ontario” defeated “Quebec” 30 holes to 23.

The Royal Canadian Golf Association organized the first Ladies’ Amateur Championship at Royal Montreal from the 14th to 17th October 1901. Around fifty participants played 18 holes of stroke play on the first afternoon, after which the leading eight ladies played 18-hole match play ties over the following three days. Local member Lilly Young had the best score of 99 on the first day and scores of 107 and better reached the quarter-finals. Young reached the final with two comfortable wins where she met Mabel Thomson from New Brunswick, who only won her semi-final at the 20th hole. Lilly Young won the final narrowly 2&1.

The pre-World War I championships were rotated between mainly Royal Montreal and Toronto, but Royal Ottawa hosted twice (in 1907 and 1911), along with Lambton in 1908 and Rosedale in 1912. Most of the competitors came from the large city clubs in Ontario and Quebec, with very few from either the west side of the country or Atlantic Canada. It wasn’t until the 13th edition was played in 1913 that the event became “Open” with four British-based women allowed to take part.

Mabel Thomson had lost the first final played in 1901 but she went on to win five of the next seven contests, reaching the semi-final stages in the other two. She didn’t take up the game until she was 23, joining the Saint John Club (now Riverside Country Club) in New Brunswick when it first opened in 1897, becoming its first lady club champion. Unfortunately, an ankle injury ended her short but very successful career in national amateur golf.

The other big name winner before the Great War was Dorothy Campbell from North Berwick, who won three consecutive finals representing Hamilton Golf Club, starting from when she beat the current champion, Violet Henry-Anderson from Montreal 2&1 in the 1910 final at Toronto. She had already won the British Ladies’ Amateur twice (in 1909 and 1911) and the US Women’s Amateur twice (in 1909 and 1910) and she would later go on to reclaim the American title at Rhode Island Country Club in 1924.

Twenty editions of the Women’s Amateur were held between the wars. The first one in 1919 was overseen by the newly formed Canadian Ladies Golf Union at Beaconsfield and it was won by Ada Mackenzie from Mississaugua Golf Club, who beat the local favourite Kate Robertson on the 19th hole in the final. This would be the first of five titles Ada would collect from seven final appearances but more about her shortly.

In 1920, the championship was thrown open to all amateur women in Britain and America but only one non-Canadian entered the competition: Alexa Stirling from Atlanta, who was a three-time winner of the US Women’s Amateur title. Alexa inflicted Kate Robertson’s second final defeat in a row at Hamilton, winning 5&3, and – after losing two finals in 1922 and 1925 – she would later beat Ada Mackenzie after a titanic tussle that ended on the 38th hole of the 1934 final in Toronto.

In 1922 at Rivermead, Ottawa, Cecil Leitch, the four-time British Ladies Amateur title holder, absolutely blew away Molly McBride from Beaconsfield in the 36-hole final by the incredible margin of 17&15 and such a convincing victory probably played a large part in the decision by the Canadian Ladies Golf Union to instigate the Canadian Ladies’ Close Championship, restricted to members of CLGU clubs. Unfortunately, playing both Open and Close competitions in consecutive weeks actually made it harder for Canadian women to compete against top foreign amateur players in the main Open event but the Close Championship ran until 1968, changing from match play to stroke play after World War II.

Ada Mackenzie was the most successful amateur woman in Canada during the 1920s and 30s, winning five Women’s Amateur titles between 1919 and 1935 and five Ladies’ Close Championships between 1926 and 1933. She also reached the semi-finals of the US Women’s Amateur twice, in 1927 and 1932, and was the medallist in that competition in 1927. Ada was also a very competent businesswoman, launching her Ladies’ Golf and Tennis Club of Toronto in 1924 then a quality sportswear store in Toronto six years later.

Mackenzie didn’t have it all her own way in the Canadian Women’s Amateur during her spell at the top. Seven of the nine titles she didn’t win between 1923 and 1931 were captured by American golfers, starting with Glenna Collet, the six-time US Women’s Amateur champion at Mount Bruno in 1923 (she would retain her title the following year at Hamilton) and ending with Maureen Orcutt, the four-time Curtis Cup player, who won her second consecutive Canadian Amateur championship at Rosedale in 1931.

There was no tournament held between 1939 and 1946 due to World War II and when hostilities ceased, Grace Lenczyk from Connecticut became the first of three new American names etched on the trophy after she easily defeated Sydney Pepler Mulqueen from Toronto 12&11 in the final. Grace also won the title 12 months later at Riverside in New Brunswick but when she reached her third final three years later at Laval-sur-le-Lac she met her match against a Canadian opponent who would become the greatest female golfer the country had ever seen: Marlene Streit of Lookout Point Golf Club in Ontario.

Seventeen-year-old Marlene won the 1951 Canadian Women’s Amateur by a narrow 1 hole margin against her illustrious opponent to begin a 25-year career in amateur golf that would see her win a total of 11 Women’s Amateur titles, 9 Close Championships, the British Ladies’ Amateur in 1953, the US Women’s Amateur in 1956 and the Australian Women’s Amateur in 1963. She also represented Canada in four editions of the Espirito Santo Trophy, coming second in 1966 at Mexico City Golf Club.

Marlene won the last Canadian Close Championship in 1968 before it was discontinued at a rain-soaked Elm Ridge then she closely contested the next six Women’s Amateur titles. She won the 1968 and 1969 match play events at Moncton and Oakdale before the tournament switched to a 72-hole stroke play event. She was runner-up in the first of these new format tournaments at Oakdale in 1970, beaten in a playoff, then she lost 12 months later at Capilano by a single shot, before winning the 1972 and 1973 competitions in Niakwa and Belvedere. Astonishingly, she came within two shots of the title at Brudenell River nine years later at the age of 48 but she would later go on to win the US Senior Women’s Amateur in 1985, 1994 and 2003 – a quite remarkable achievement by one of the greatest golfers to ever play the game.

A native player from the more modern era, Mary Ann Hayward, mustn’t be forgotten as this lady from Montreal captured four Women’s Amateur titles between 1993 and 2004. All told, she was also a six-time winner of the Quebec Amateur, a five-time winner of the Ontario Amateur and a member of many inter-provincial teams for both Ontario and Quebec. She also represented Canada eight times in the Espirito Santo Trophy, finishing joint second to Sweden at the 2004 event in Puerto Rico. Mary Ann was recognized as the top female Amateur golfer in Canada five times between 1990 and 2005.

American Debbie Massey won three Canadian Amateurs in a row from 1974 to 1976 and Montreal’s Lisa Meldrum repeated that achievement in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Non-North American winners in the new millennium include Australian Stacey Keating at Elmhurst Golf & Country Club, Manitoba in 2008, Thailand’s Ariya Jutanugarn (who finished five shots ahead of her sister Moriya) at Lethbridge Country Club, Alberta in 2015, and Korea’s Hye-jin Choi at Ken-Wo Golf Club, Nova Scotia in 2016.

Winners of the early contests were presented with the Lady Grey Trophy but after it was won three years in a row from 1910 to 1912 by Dorothy Campbell of Hamilton this prize was replaced with a trophy donated by the Duchess of Connaught in 1913. From then on, the winner held the cup for a year, and was given a gold medal to keep. From 1920 onward, she would also have her name inscribed on a championship shield purchased by the CLGU.

The tournament was hosted by Royal Montreal seven times but all of these editions were held at the club’s old location. Similarly, four of the competitions staged at Toronto took place between 1902 and 1910, before the club moved to its present location outside Mississauga.

There are twenty courses which have been used as Canadian Women’s Amateur venues that are not listed below as they’re currently not included in any of our ranking charts for this country.