The name Rene Muylaert probably won't mean anything to anyone outside Canada, or to anyone outside southern Ontario actually. But I felt very grateful to Mr. Muylaert today - lovely day to play golf, played Victoria East: built in the early 70s, playable, enjoyable, architecturally-sound, easy to walk, pleasant to look at, inexpensive, well-maintained (on a modest budget, I imagine), using the natural terrain well (and with few signs of much earth-moving, at least to my eyes), 6,500 yards from the back tees - well spread out over many dogleg Par 4s (380-420), some short and some long (195) Par 3s, and reacheable (525) Par 5s, all fit into a smallish piece of property (135 acres) without any of the holes feeling cramped together, or the course, even on a busy day, feeling crowded, and with good pace of play with a good percentage of young and female golfers. I mention all those details because, from other courses of Mr. Muylaert's I've played and from what I've read about him, that was pretty much what he did time and time and time again, on all his courses, and usually on modest budgets. Starting in the early 1960s and up to his death in the early 2005, he designed/built about 50 courses, I think almost all of them in Ontario. According to a blurb I just went to find, not one of his courses cost more than $4 million in total (with that high-end being a very rare occurance - I can't imagine many of his courses costing even half of that.) The same blurb had a quote from this modest man himself: "On every job, I learned a little more. I didn't work under anybody. I did it my way. I tried to follow the land." He built a lot of good courses. I don't know how we quantify a man's contributions (I'm sure it's probably dumb/ill-advised even to try). But god bless you, Rene Muylaert -- your work continues to bring pleasure to maybe hundreds of thousands of people every year. I think it is men like him who are the heart and soul of any profession. A tip of the hat to Mr. Muylaert. He tried to follow the land.
Peter
Btw - even for people who know Mr. Muylaert's work, Victoria East isn't a course that comes to mind. Its name comes from the fact that it's on Victoria Street, on the east side of the street.