Laura Beauchamp is a teacher at heart, with a lifelong love for learn­ing and enjoy­ing new exper­i­ences. Her career has included deliv­er­ing, devel­op­ing, and man­aging edu­ca­tion pro­grams for several museums and pro­vin­cial parks.

I was born in Calgary, Alberta but at the young age of 7 my family moved to Saudi Arabia where I spent nearly 10 years of my child­hood living on a com­pound owned by the Saudi Aramco Oil Company. This allowed me the oppor­tun­ity to travel a great deal to coun­tries such as Turkey, Russia, Greece, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Holland, the United Kindgom and the United States of America. It’s no wonder I have a travel bug in me.

There were no high schools on the com­pound for for­eign­ers so every family was forced to send their chil­dren to board­ing school. My older brother and sister atten­ded an American school in Switzerland, but when my time came I was sent to a Canadian board­ing school in Lanciano, Italy. During my 2.5 years living there, I fell in love with the European life­style and culture. It will be an excit­ing time on this trip return­ing for the fifth time, but this time being able to show my husband.

My dad retired from Saudi Arabia in 2001 and we moved back to Calgary. Not wanting to cost my parents any more money I atten­ded the University of Calgary where I com­pleted a degree in Archaeology with a minor in Museum and Heritage Studies.

In 2005 I secured my first job with Alberta Provincial Parks where I was trained as a tour guide at Dinosaur Provincial Park. I facil­it­ated and guided bus tours, hikes and delivered the­at­rical per­form­a­ces. I worked at Dinosaur for two con­sec­ut­ive summers. My final summer with Alberta Parks, 2007, was spent working at Fish Creek Provincial Park as an Information Officer and Interpreter.

In my museum career I have worked short con­tracts at the Nickle Arts Museum at the University of Calgary, assist­ing with a Peruvian exhibit and at Fort Calgary where I assisted with school and group visits.

In 2007, I started working at The Military Museums as an edu­cator and inter­preter for school groups grades K-12, scouts, seniors and birth­days. In 2009 I became the Education and Interpretation Manager, which was an honour and a pleas­ure.  I have a passion for edu­ca­tion, learn­ing new things and teach­ing others. In the future I intend on com­plet­ing my edu­ca­tion degree.

I loved my work, but unfor­tu­nately due to polit­ics between my society and the Canadian Department of National Defense, my society decided to end it’s rela­tion­ship with DND. It’s decision to leave meant that I, and all the employ­ees of the society, were laid off. Although a sad decision for the museum, it was a bless­ing and cata­lyst for our travel adven­tures. Chris walked away from a job that ulti­mately was not along the same path has his career ambi­tions and we both com­pleted our last day of work on December 23, 2009.  Within 1 month we had sold or given away most of our belong­ings and were home­less, jobless and travelling.