When most people travel to Cabot Links in Nova Scotia for the first time, they occupy their minds almost entirely with the golf they are playing on the resort’s well-crafted courses overlooking the expansive Gulf of St. Lawrence.
But Matt Welter started thinking of other things on his maiden trip to the property that golf impresarios Ben Cowan-Dewar and Mike Keiser had created on the Cape Breton coast.
“It just struck me looking around a place that was a three-hour drive from the airport in Halifax and wondering where the hundreds of people working there lived,” said Welter of his 2017 visit.
While that may seem to be an odd thing to be pondering at such a time and place, it in many ways made perfect sense for him.
For one thing, Welter was in the real estate business back home in Valparaiso, Indiana. “So, no matter where I went, I was invariably thinking about where people lived and worked,” he explained.
For another, Welter knew from the few years he had spent caddying after graduating from Indiana University in 2010, including a se...