Veterans Connect Recover
Our Mission
Veterans Connect Recover (VCR) provides outdoor-based, group support programs to help Veterans with mental health challenges and physical disabilities transition to civilian life.
Our Vision
A world where all Canadian Veterans feel connected to themselves, to each other, and to their communities.
Our Philosophy
We believe that adventures serve as a compassionate container to learn, heal, and build community by facilitating connection in three ways:
- Connection with nature, which has been scientifically shown to support healing.
- Connection with themselves, through activities that compel them to be in their bodies.
- Connection with others in situations that have real consequences, like their service, but in ways that fundamentally help them recalibrate individually and as a community.
At VCR, we facilitate individual and group learning through organic reflection and discussion, which helps Veterans metabolize events during service into valuable experiences for civilian life.
Our Principles
- To accept ourselves and others in an inclusive group process
- To build an inspiring, diverse, and growing community that supports connection through adventure
- To maintain a curious, open mind and heart for self-development
- To develop social, intellectual, and emotional courage
- To cultivate humility as a means of creating a safe space to explore challenges of daily life
- To uphold values of kindness and compassion coupled with honesty, integrity, vulnerability, and inclusiveness with a non-judgmental attitude
- To build trust through intrinsic and extrinsic processes of harvesting truth, which supports awareness and personal responsibility
Our Team
Chair person, Nicole Ker
Nicole is a Canadian Army Veteran who served for six years in Artillery and deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. Her post-military service journey led her to Outward Bound Canada where she participated in the Outward Bound Veterans Rock Climbing program in 2012. This inspired her to deepen her involvement in the work of healing through the process of integrating her experiences. She became certified to guide through the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides in the hiking and rock climbing stream. She worked for three years as a lead guide on Outward Bound Canada Veteran programs, and is also a therapeutic counsellor and yoga instructor.
Her passion for helping Veterans and her love of the outdoors led her to create VCR. She believes Veterans can overcome a multitude of challenges through connection, and using adventure as a means to do it is the perfect recipe to enhance the well-being and quality of life for Veterans.
Nicole has worked through her own struggles in transitioning to civilian life and has many resources to share with participants—healing through nature being one of them. It’s her dream to reach as many Veterans as possible with VCR programs, starting on Vancouver Island, expanding into surrounding areas of BC and eventually being a nationwide program that connects Veterans in their local communities, across the country.
Nicole gives thanks to the traditional, unceded territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on whose ancestral lands she currently resides.
Vice Chair person, Ken Wylie
Ken has been a life-long adventurer. His adventures compel him to go deeper, to face himself and through that find his greatest strength.
Certified internationally as a mountain guide with the International Federation of Mountain Guide Associations (IFMGA), Ken is a leading adventure education innovator, developing practices for adventurers to use to better understand and improve themselves to make better choices in risk environments.
Ken has observed that the journey of adventure, when practiced well is a path to wholeness. This is the topic of his soon to be published book entitled Dancing With The Abyss. Adventure: The Human Journey Through Fragmentation to The Authentic Power of Wholeness.
Ken has climbed rock and ice, skied and alpine climbed extensively in his life. He has held faculty positions at Thompson Rivers University and Mount Royal University in their respective outdoor programs. Ken is the author of Buried 2020
Ken is retired from guiding and works primarily as a facilitator helping others draw insights and wisdom from the adventure experience.
Director, Caleb Mcintyre
Caleb is a seasoned trip planner, educator, and risk manager with a passion for facilitating transformational learning experiences in wilderness environments. A natural team builder, Caleb injects passion and intention into group dynamics to foster communities of trust amongst diverse groups of participants. Caleb's training and experience in Mental Health First Aid, Trauma Informed Care, and Indigenous Cultural Safety support his work with members of marginalized communities. Caleb has lead programs for military organizations, as well as Outward Bound, Katimavik, and many other outdoor education programs in Canada and abroad.