The new club was built on land that was then on the western edge of settlement for the city and district, following the World War I-era construction of the LaSalle Causeway and provincial highway, across the Cataraqui River as it feeds into Lake Ontario, in downtown Kingston.
[2][3] The first Canadian Amateur Championship winner in 1895, Thomas Harley, a Scottish immigrant carpenter and stevedore, employed on the dockyards at RMC, represented the Kingston Golf Club.
[4] The Kingston Golf Club operated until 1925, with a modified layout, but the area's golfers gradually switched to Cataraqui in the years prior to 1925.
[9] Cataraqui began hosting important events soon after its redesign, and was ranked #57 on the list of Canada's top courses in 2006 by Scoregolf magazine.
The original clubhouse, opened in 1922, burned to the ground on August 16, 1973, destroying virtually all of the club's archives and many of its trophies, but with no loss of life.
Notable champions from events staged at Cataraqui have included Sandy Somerville, Marlene Streit, Moe Norman, Warren Sye, Jerry Anderson, and Brooke Henderson.
McQuillan, who earned PGA Tour playing privileges in December 2010 for the 2011 season, and who was also a PGA Tour member in 2012, set a new competitive course record of 62 in a Pro-Am tournament in July 2008, breaking the mark set in 2003 by Chris Barber (a former Cataraqui member and several times Ottawa Zone CPGA champion) by one stroke.
Current Cataraqui Club professionals include Canadian former Tour players Malcolm Trickey and Kevin Dickey, and 1998 Ontario Ladies' Amateur champion Kristen MacLaren.