It’s been more than 25 years since Aaron Little first set foot on Fox Harb’r Resort. The veteran greenkeeper is grateful to work at this idyllic 1,100-acre property nestled along Nova Scotia’s Northumberland Coast and has no plans to leave any time soon.
“At this point, I’m a lifer!” says Little, the golf superintendent and grounds manager. “I’ve seen the property grow from the ground up.”
Little grew up in a turf and maintenance environment. At 14, he started working for his father at Fredericton Golf & Curling Club in New Brunswick’s capital. After a decade, he left for Fox Harb’r to join superintendent Barry Scott. The pair oversaw the grow-in of the original 18-hole championship golf course in 2000, and Little assumed the head greenkeeper job when Scott left several years later. Over the past two decades, Little has watched the resort continually add new amenities such as a 26-acre vineyard (see Project Timeline, p. 39).
“The constant development certainly keeps me entertained,” says Little, whose core turf team includes assistant superintendent Richard White and irrigation and spray tech Brett MacDonald.
Ron Joyce, the co-founder of Tim Hortons (Canada’s favorite coffee and donut chain) planted the seeds for this posh place when he bought the property in 1987. The billionaire envisioned a gated residential community and an upscale retreat for his wealthy cronies and their friends. That’s why Fox Harb’r features a 5,000-foot airstrip for private jets and a deep-sea 25-slip marina for luxury yachts.
Tiger Woods holds the golf course record (63), which he shot during a Nike corporate event in 2009. Other celebrity guests over the years include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the late American business mogul Wayne Huizenga and legendary National Hockey League star Bobby Orr. Joyce passed away in 2019, but today his son Steven, who serves as chief executive, and president Kevin Toth, carry on his legacy.
Fox Harb’r has always served three distinct markets: residential members, corporate business clients and individual travelers. Thanks to the foresight of the current leadership — and a strategic business plan focused on expanding the property’s real estate offerings while concurrently enhancing the golf course — Fox Harb’r Resort is growing again.
“As a golf course property, we have evolved into more of a resort operation,” Little explains. “There are a lot of non-golfers now staying with us and golf is just another amenity. We realized though that if we want to expand our residential offerings, we couldn’t block these members from the tee sheet four days a week with corporate traffic. The executive team decided the best way to address this challenge was to expand our golf offerings to better service the ever-growing corporate demand.”
When the original 18 holes opened, the course received instant acclaim. Still, one of the critiques of Graham Cooke’s design, which combined a links-style course with a parkland layout, was that only nine holes front the three miles of the North Atlantic coastline with the other nine routed inland.
In 2019, Fox Harb’r sent out a request for proposal asking for architects to submit design ideas for a new 18-hole course. After reviewing all of the RFPs, the management team of Steven and Toth were torn between a pair of proposals: the one from Doug Carrick and the one from Tom McBroom. Unknowingly, this pair of Canada’s most accomplished modern golf course architects had submitted similar plans. Fox Harb’r proposed a co-design and they agreed.
“Kudos to them,” says McBroom, whose designs include many of the top courses in Canada. “No one ever asked us to [co-design a course] before. If we were asked to collaborate 20 years ago when we were younger and trying to make our own mark, ego might have got in the way and I’m not sure either of us would have agreed. But, at this stage in our careers, it made sense.”
Rather than build an entirely new 18-hole course, the architects are reimagining some of the existing holes — taking the links half of the existing seaside course, adding nine new holes and renovating some others — bringing them closer to the water to create a more authentic links course like Muirfield in Scotland. The second part of this renovation is renovating the front nine of the original parkland layout and giving it a Heathlands look like England’s Sunningdale Golf Club. The result: two distinct world-class 18-hole offerings, rebranded as the Oceanside Course and the Vineyard Course.
The project is now in the third year of a four-year building. The new Oceanside 9 opened this past spring. Then, the original back nine of the inland course would be shut while the new Vineyard 9 is seeded and grown in. This Heathlands course will feature interesting grassing and native material that will decorate and define the bunkering. The new Vineyard 9 is planned to open in the spring of 2026. The third phase will see the renovation of the existing Ocean course in 2026. Finally, by 2027, the renovated Ocean 9 will open and the renovation of the existing inland 9 will be completed.
According to Carrick, engaging greenkeepers from the outset of any project is paramount. “I advise a lot of my clients to bring a superintendent in early in the process, so they are familiar with everything we are proposing,” he says. “We can listen to their concerns from a maintenance perspective since they are the ones who need to look after the course after it is built and we are gone.
“Aaron [Little] knows this property better than anyone. … He knows the drainage challenges they’ve had in the past and the climate conditions he faces here with nasty winds off the Northumberland Strait,” Carrick adds. “For example, we had the grade elevations on the new greens close to the ocean roughed in and Aaron told us they might be vulnerable to salt spray during a storm; he suggested moving them back and raising them up a little bit to minimize that impact and we made this change.”
Carrick is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with one of his peers and he is especially excited to work — for the first time in his career — on a seaside property.
“Working on an oceanside golf course is something I’ve always wanted to do,” he says. “Fox Harb’r has an extensive coastline to work with. Graham did a nice job with the original design. Tom and I are just trying to enhance that whole experience by adding more ocean holes: two on the new front nine and a new par 3 on the back nine that features a green on a cliff adjacent to the ocean, so players will have to carry the ball over the sea.”
Construction of the new Ocean- side 9 was completed last fall, but weather delayed seeding. The new and renovated holes feature bentgrass greens, tees and fairways with dwarf bluegrass in the exterior roughs. Seeding was originally planned for August and September 2023, but due to heavy rainfall, only the fescue areas were seeded. The first new renovated Ocean 9 opened for play earlier this season.
Construction of the new Vineyard 9 is ahead of schedule. The plan is to start seeding this fall and finish in the spring to allow for a full-season of grow-in before the course opens in 2026. Along with the renovations to the original golf course and building an additional 18 holes, Carrick and McBroom are also co-designing a putting course on the property. On the residential side, Fox Harb’r is building 18 two-story townhomes and 48 new luxury homes.
With all of this development, Little knows that finding enough skilled labor is a concern. The good news, for now, is that because they are a resort course, they can cross-train staff from other departments to fill any short-term employment gaps.
“Staffing, especially at the entry level, is already an industry challenge and that trend will continue,” he says. “In simplistic terms, you could almost double our labor with the addition of another 18 holes.”
Little is lucky to have a dedicated core turf staff, along with a few semi-retired locals who cut grass several days a week. Fox Harb’r also employs a full-time horticulturalist responsible for more than 20 acres of garden space that includes the hotel, conference center, clubhouse, golf course, spa and 55 residential homes. Because the property is far from a major urban center, Fox Harb’r owns most of the required heavy equipment for on-course construction, so they often tackle smaller grading and drainage projects in-house.
The shifting winds blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean are one of the maintenance challenges Fox Harb’r perennially faces, which affects its irrigation practices. The current renovation included the installation of a new Rainbird IC System. The heads were strategically placed — an extra 30 were added on the fly on the existing back nine of the Ocean course during construction where Little felt there was not enough coverage — and the fairways are triple row in most places.
“We now have sprinkler coverage on both the north and the south side,” Little says, “because what happens here is that you get a lot of southerly winds in the summer and the irrigation system was initially set up for the prevailing westerly and northerly winds.”
Having two courses to choose from in the future allows golfers to take a break and play the Vineyard when these coastal sea winds get wicked.
“I like to say that even when designing the best drainage plan you are still always going to go back and pick off trouble spots once the course opens,” Little says. “We put a fair amount in all the low-lying areas.”
The soil at Fox Harb’r is red clay; it is like mud: similar to pavement when dry and barely walkable when wet. “If I had my way, I would love to dry down the property a bit more, but the owners like it lush,” Little says.
The resort has a large surface area lake that collects rainwater. There are also five ponds on the inland course that feed back to this irrigation reservoir where all the drainage on the golf course goes. “It always amazes me that we can take a 17-acre lake, pump it all the way down to two or three feet, and it only takes a few good rainfalls to top it back up,” Little says.
To accommodate the potential additional water needed, in case of a period of prolonged drought, and due to the additional 18 holes, a second reservoir pond was excavated. Little hopes they never have to use it. “Leaves will be coming off the trees if it ever gets that dry!” he says.
By 2027, thanks to this unique design collaboration and course reimagination, Fox Harb’r guests, homeowners and members can take their pick from more tee times and choose between two distinct golf experiences: an 18-hole links course or an 18-hole Heathlands layout.
“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster, but also a real pleasure and a blessing to work with these two acclaimed architects,” Little says. “I’ve enjoyed walking the property with them, offering my insight, and then having them take some of my suggestions and making changes on the fly. In the long term, my experience working alongside them on this site will pay off for the maintenance program.”
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