If you were to stand on the front step of Shirley Pettigrew's house at Round Island Cape Breton, and look out over Mira Bay, you'd have no trouble understanding why she calls it her dream home.

Every morning when she wakes, the ocean stretches before her like a welcome, just as she had imagined in her dreams of coming back home to live. After living more than forty years in large cities, Shirley cherishes her seaside home and her almost idyllic way of life. Her only complaint - there aren't enough hours in the day.

She's an avid gardener, as you can see from the beautiful gardens around her house. She loves to walk along the beach, sometimes all the way to her sister's summer home at Catalone Gut. She swims every chance she gets at her own beach across from her house, cross-county skis through her own woods in winter, enjoys family gatherings with her sisters and brother who live in the area; keeps in great shape at yoga classes, and just generally enjoys life to the max.

Like so many other young people back in the 1950's, Shirley left Cape Breton to find work in Ontario. Her careers as an airline stewardess and an art teacher brought her to cities like Cornwall, Toronto and Calgary, but she always knew that she would return to the ocean someday, either to the West Coast or back home to the East Coast. The year before she retired, she came to Cape Breton for a holiday, happened to stumble upon the property in Round Island, fell in love with it, and two years later it was hers.

Shirley thinks finding her dream home, which coincidentally is just a mile from her birthplace at Mira Gut, was one of those things that was just meant to be. The tranquility and peace that she finds there, and in Cape Breton in general, is so agreeable to her that now she can't imagine living anywhere else.

In Shirley's own words "Cape Breton is serenity for my soul."