In my earliest memory of traveling, I was 5 and my mom and dad drove us from Edmonton, where we lived, all the way south in our 1956 Chevy station wagon to Calgary. The station wagon’s main job was to deliver flowers for Walter Ramsay Florist, my dad’s flower shop.

Then we drove west to Banff on what’s now the Old Banff Highway. Along the way, we pulled over at an ‘Indian’ souvenir shop. I proudly wore my iconic Davy Crockett ‘coonskin cap’ with leather chaps.

It was thrilling. I’d never seen a mountain before, and the connection between Davy Crockett and the ‘Indians’ and me, between doing a thing and being a thing, turned me into an intrepid lifelong traveller.

Read on…