VanBuskirk (MacKnight, Shaw), Lois Irene, R.N. Passed away on 1 January 2012 at Dartmouth General Hospital, after a brief illness. Lois was the fourth child of the late Florence and Harris Shaw, Windsor Forks, NS. She was the ninth generation of Planter families who first came to the Annapolis Valley in 1757. Besides her parents, she was predeceased by sisters, Helen and Mabel and brother, Vernon; first husband, Ralph MacKnight. She leaves in sadness her second husband, LeRoi VanBuskirk; her only son, Scott MacKnight; grandchildren, Aaron (Jane) MacKnight, Eric (Giselle) MacKnight and Pamela (Darrell) Root; two great-grandchildren; numerous nieces and nephews; sisters-in-law Marguerite (MacKnight) Drayton and Thelma Shaw. Lois was a proud graduate of the Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing and worked as a VON nurse in Dartmouth, until her marriage in 1948 to Ralph MacKnight. They settled in Dartmouth, where Ralph was the pharmacist and later owner of the Owl Drug Store. Lois was a former member of Beta Sigma Phi sorority and Brightwood Golf and Country Club. Two years after Ralph’s sudden death, she married Leroi VanBuskirk and they had many happy times until her recent poor health. Her great love was gardening; from the rock gardens of her first home on Old Ferry Road to the many shrubs and plants at her Fairfield Avenue home. Her remains have been entrusted to Atlantic Funeral Home, Dartmouth. She has been cremated and placed in a columbarium with her first husband, Ralph. At her explicit request, there will be no visitation and no service. She asked that no flowers or other remembrances be sent, but when Spring arrives to plant a tree or shrub and make this world a more beautiful place.