CHARLEVOIX, QC - We plummet over the edge of the cliff — butterflies in my stomach. I’m on my first-ever helicopter ride and there couldn’t be a more beautiful place for it than this Charlevoix region, just 80 kilometres east of Québec City.

CALGARY - When my wife, Stephanie, and I descended on this city for a week in July during the Calgary Stampede, it took me four days before I had my first taste of Alberta beef.

WASAGA BEACH, ON - Ahhh, the dog days of summer are about to end and another year of enjoying this wonderful weekend retreat with my family and friends has come and gone too soon.

TROIS-RIVIÉRES, QUE. - “Our prison was so out of the way that in the old days prisoners had to go to Montréal or Québec City to be judged. Then they’d be returned to us here in Trois-Rivières, to serve their sentence, or be executed.”

MONTRÉAL - After sampling a saison flavoured beer with the most unlikely of ingredients – mustard — we try a smoked rye porter paired with not just any poutine, but one with a rich sauce à la bière.

HALIFAX - Here we were, at 12,000 metres, looking out over the royal blue skies and the fluffy cloud carpet below. Across the aisle, excited and distinctly Scottish accents engaged in rapid conversation made us both smile. My wife, Lorraine, had long wanted to take her Glaswegian parents on a road trip through New Scotland to see its beauty and to experience its culture. None of us were getting younger — her parents in their late 70s — so for Christmas we gave them this trip.

HALIFAX - Dusk lingers, picture-perfect, over Halifax Harbour; a silver moon on the rise, a lighthouse blinking in the distance, skies glowing purple and pink. All along Harbourwalk, a 10-city-block-long path stretching from Casino Nova Scotia in the north to Pier 21 in the south, buskers perform their final shows before dark descends. Fiddle and horn players, accordionists, creators of giant balloons — they all attract holiday crowds.

WOODVIEW, ON - Sometimes, the best vacation destinations are the ones closest to home. Take this sleepy little hamlet, located just two hours north of Toronto in Ontario’s pristine Kawartha Lakes District, for example.

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.

OKA, QUEBEC - We didn’t really blend in with the festive Canada Day crowds because our bikes were laden with heavy saddlebags. It was mid-afternoon and the sky was heavy with rain but it didn’t matter – the energy at the intersection of Rideau and Sussex streets in Ottawa was electric. We dismounted our bikes and pushed past the throngs dressed in red and white and waving their Canadian flags, our bulging saddlebags jostling the ankles of adults and the strollers of toddlers.