Posted on 25 July 2025 by Chris Brown.
What was intended to give her and her partner a convenient and affordable means of chasing their passion for rock climbing became a lesson in perseverance and self-confidence for Medicine Hat Public Library’s summer student librarian.
In 2022, Alyssa Roussy and her partner Jeff converted a cargo van in a camper van complete with a bed, sink, cabinets and electricity. The pair were ready to travel the highways and byways of eastern Canada and the U.S., scaling mountains by day and sleeping in the van by night.
Spoiler alert: the trip never happened, the van’s rusted frame failing a road safety inspection.
Still, Roussy has no regrets, looking back on the entire project as being about the journey instead of the destination. She’ll share her experience of triumph and learning, her motivations, the building process and all the ups and downs at Van Life: How to Build a Camper Van on Tuesday, July 29, at 6:30 p.m. in the library theatre.
Roussy, 29, stresses she is not an expert and no one who attends on Tuesday should take anything as advice or instruction for a project of their own.
For her, it started as a sort of challenge to herself and a creative outlet for the woodworking skills she had.
“At the time I was really interested in building things, but I didn't really have any confidence,” she says. “I had aspirations to someday build my own cottage and be a handy person, and so this was like a stepping stone towards that. A smaller project -- more affordable, but still not that affordable.”
She says the months-long build was a lot of hard work, which she relished.
“I really enjoyed getting my hands dirty and learning everything as I went. I'd never stripped a van. I’d never had to patch a bunch of rust holes. There was a lot of like new tools that I'd never touched, like an angle grinder. Never have built my own bed or cabinets and stuff,” Roussy says. “So I feel like the whole thing was really fun because it was a new thing to learn every step of the way. Just knowing that, after every step you can see your progress, seeing and saying, ‘oh my gosh, I built that. I did that,’ that was very satisfying.”
She says at the heart of her presentation is one lesson that she carries with her today. It’s an inspiring mantra anyone can use in almost any aspect of life.
“You are capable. That's what I want people to take away, is that if they want to do it they should go ahead and do it.”
Follow us on social media: @mhpubliclibrary