Laura Archer's life changed when she decided to travel the world in 2004. (MSF/Canadian Press)

Curiosity led Laura Archer to explore the world; compassion led her to the realization she could not simply travel through it.

The Canadian nurse was abducted along with three other members of Doctors Without Borders in the Darfur region of Sudan on Wednesday. Reports of their release on Friday turned out to be premature, but a Sudanese official announced they had been granted their freedom on Saturday.

Archer, a P.E.I. native, graduated from the University of Prince Edward Island with a nursing degree in 2001. In an account of her international aid work in UPEI's alumni magazine, Archer described how her life changed with a single realization in 2004, while she was a nurse in San Francisco.

"It occurred to me that I knew very little about the world outside of North America," she wrote.

"I sold all of my belongings, bought a backpack and got on a plane."

Her travels found her in Thailand when the tsunami struck. Frustrated by the rejection by local officials to put her nursing skills to work there, she filled her backpack with first-aid supplies, flew to India and set up a makeshift clinic on a beach near a village devastated by the tsunami. She stayed for three weeks.

"Through this experience, the difference between being a tourist and a humanitarian became apparent to me — and I knew which I wanted to be," she wrote.

Nurse encounters 'level of fear' in Africa

'I was constantly aware of the fact that I had a safe home to return to.'—Laura Archer, nurse, Doctors Without Borders

She returned to Canada in December 2005 and applied to work with Doctors Without Borders. A few months later, she had her first posting in the Central African Republic, including time in a village called Markounda.

"What struck me most during my time in Markounda was the level of fear that exists in Central Africa," she wrote.

"The experience was humbling. I knew that, unlike my locally hired co-workers, I could leave. I was constantly aware of the fact that I had a safe home to return to."

Archer was in Canada as recently as August, when she presented a show of her paintings of people she encountered in Africa.

According to a website featuring those paintings, she was due to return from Darfur next month.