Meet the Designer

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first.  I was born in Amherst and spent the first 15 years of my life being happy and playing sports in the county until I left to pursue my dreams in the big wide world.  At first it was to play hockey in the US.  Eventually I navigated away from sport and took great pleasure in the travel.  I worked for almost 10 years in the forestry industry planting and thinning in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and BC, before moving back to Cumberland and spending another decade in landscaping.  I began specializing in dry fit stone work and natural building solutions.  In the last 5 years I have begun diving deeper into all things trees, searching for ways to do forestry better and to find solutions that create healthy forest and pleasurable recreation.

Smack dab in the middle of all these pursuits I stumbled across the game of disc golf.  It changed my life and became a cornerstone of my identity.  Disc golf allowed me the space to create beautiful projects, it gave people reasons to walk through the forest, and gave me hope for the future.  Eventually I got lucky, life changingly lucky, when I was offered the opportunity to build a disc golf project here at Ski Wentworth.

Over the years I have built a total of 65 different courses in 4 countries.  I have hosted 5 national championships, including 3 in a row that broke the record for attendance in Canada.Each project has felt like a gift.  I have slowly developed a style all my own, as some would say it’s not necessarily the ‘fairway’ but it is certainly the ‘Ben’ way.  I have never lost the desire to make the game of disc golf thrive in the place where I am from.

This is where it really gets interesting.  The project that we are undertaking here on the mountain is my first chance to combine everything I have worked for in my life.  It is my Ikigai, fully and completely.  The 3 disc golf courses that we are building showcase everything that is great about our county and our community.  They are beautiful, subtle, and built to last through almost anything.  They have allowed me to find local partners to mill the wood we take off the mountain, to create walking trails where otherwise no one would go, and to highlight what happens when a group of people share the gifts they have access to, instead of keeping them hidden.