TYNE VALLEY, P.E.I. - I posed a simple question to professional oyster shuckers at a competition in Miami Beach in 2006: “Tell me about your knife.” It was my first exposure to the wild and colourful world of shucking competitions — outside of my summer hometown’s fledgling oyster festival — and I was unprepared for their impassioned answers involving blade length and thickness, flexibility, handle shape and size and how finely to sharpen the point.

BRACKLEY BEACH, P.E.I. - While walking on the red sandy beach that Canada’s smallest province is so famous for, my playful son Noah pulls on my braids and tells me “you look just like Anne.”

BANFF, ALBERTA - Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer were once asked to design a golf course combining the best 18 holes they had played around the world.