We are Dana and François Blouin, and we are travellers and life explorers.
We both grew up on Canadian farms, “doing stuff”—playing and working outside, getting lost, being resourceful, learning how to fix things, being bored, and therefore creative. François is from a dairy farm in southern Quebec and Dana from a grain farm in southwestern Manitoba. We met on the Manitoba prairie in the last millennium (yes!), have been married for 18 years, and have raised 2 amazing, bilingual kids.
We are both professional wildlife biologists/ecologists, and have over 40 combined years experience in conservation biology in prairie Canada. We both consciously chose to work in the non-profit conservation sector throughout our careers and found that the key to conservation biology was not necessarily the principles of biology…but rather creating meaningful relationships with those who made a living off the land, sharing stories, being respectful, learning at every opportunity, and fostering effective communication and collaboration. Who knew?
In 2015 we decided to make a life change. We quit our well-paying jobs and travelled the world for a year with our family under the banner of the “Crazy Cool Travelin’ Family”. Even though we didn’t realize it at the time, we were craving true, authentic experiences in our lives. We travelled for 11 months through South America and southern Europe and participated in 9 volunteer experiences. We helped families on their farms and properties, soaked up the local culture, visited unique places, met remarkable people, and learned by doing–about history, about cultures, and about ourselves. It was during this trip that the seed was planted for an experiential tourism company, to provide other travellers with the type of experience we sought when visiting new places.
We returned to Canada and purposefully chose Kaslo, British Columbia as our home in 2017; for its beauty, its nature and its people. We are excited to share our experience, our passion, and our community with you, Between a Lake and a High Place!