About The Peaceful Nomads

Like many people we've been looking for a creative outlet during the pandemic. We both work in the mental health and substance use field in Canada, and we are both team leads for Assertive Community Treatment teams (or A.C.T. teams) - we work with the most complex, and marginalized, individuals in our community.  People who have a long history of homelessness and who are not suitable for traditional concurrent disorders treatment within the health care system.  We love our work, and we recognize the importance of balance in our lives - this is part of that balance. 

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We're a bit older and as our tag line suggests we hope we are occasionally wiser - we come to travel vlogging/blogging what have you with a perspective based in social justice and social work.  This also means we're not staying at chain hotels - not usually.  Out of necessity, and out of preference, we stay in hostels that are run by people from the community we are visiting as part of being a conscientious tourist to ensure we are giving back to the communities we have come to visit.  We find the local hostels/pensions are a way to connect with the place we are visiting, and more often than not we get to learn more about the people who live there  We do talk about food a lot - we think this is one of the reasons most people travel is for the different culinary experiences; that and meeting the people who live around this planet.  We are also pescatarians, so no land-based meat.  Just the occasional fish dish.  Otherwise we are in vegetarian restaurants, street food, or cooking our own meals.  We have become quite good at finding vegetarian options in most cities we have visited, and if there aren't many vegetarian options then the hostels usually have kitchens for use.  Just in case you are wondering, the video on the home page is on the way home from Ireland flying over Greenland - it was spectacular that day.  The photo on the home page of the two of us was taken at Montserrat near Barcelona. The photo on this page was taken on Mount Black in Cypress Provincial Park near Vancouver, BC. 

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We are new to vlogging (as of 2023), so  figuring out all the tips and tricks of this medium may take some time.  We also have day jobs, so content won't be quite as prolific as some of the other travel folk.  Maybe in time.  Once we retire in about 10 years we plan on taking a 'gap-year' and spending a good 8 - 10 months travelling.  In the meantime we'll rely on our previous travel photos and videos for content with more to come; just a lot less often than some sites.  We'll apologize in advance for some of the quality of the earlier video - we have economical cameras, so video from earlier trips may appear a bit grainy.  It gets better as the years go on - our Hawaii videos from 2023 are pretty smooth. We picked up a Go Pro Hero 9, which has great stabilization.  We will mention that we are big fans of Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) - his travel books come with us when we are in Europe, so occasionally we will reference a video to one of his that has a full history of the area.  Rick Steves has done tremendous work beginning in the 1970s providing history and education for travelers going to Europe as well as ongoing advocacy for North Americans being conscientious tourists. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. 

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Let us know where you've been and hostels you love in the comments section.  Thanks for visiting our site and hearing/reading what we have to say about things.