A few days ago the acclaimed British writer Sir Salman Rushdie published an interview with the Chicago Tribune in which he wondered why he visited such an “oddball” place as the Niagara Falls Golf Club, in Canada. But this is a golf club with a simple answer for Rushdie’s curiosity: It’s where Charlie Chaplin went for his annual summer vacation.
“I liked golf, and I always thought Charlie Chaplin would like golf because he was a horse lover,” Rushdie told the Tribune. “He had beautiful horses. He went on holidays on holidays. He would take the proverbial.”
For visitors, the attraction of the trip from Los Angeles is getting the occasional Charlie Chaplin impersonator. The Tribune interviewed one such impersonator, John Doyle, who takes it upon himself to travel to Canada and don the iconic red hat. Doyle also regales the Tribune with a story about his first time meeting the comic giant. “He liked my picture a lot,” Doyle told the Tribune. “He called me an impresario and an entertainer.”
“On a vacation I never would have expected to read about a fictional character actually visiting a real golf club,” Rushdie concluded.
Rushdie will no doubt be back to the club before long. But even if he doesn’t, there are plenty of memories to be made there.
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Read the full story at the Chicago Tribune.
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