Kamloops Walk for Alzheimer’s Sunday to honour Ken and Marilyn Ezzard

Marilyn Ezzard wasn’t officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s until 2015, and she passed away on April 13 at the age of 82.

“Marilyn did the books all the time and one day she was at her desk and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,'” Ken recalled. “I said, ‘Why not?’ and she said, ‘I can’t balance the books anymore. I can’t remember where the top and the bottom is.'”

“I knew there was a problem then.”

Ken said Marilyn stayed at home for a number of years after she was diagnosed, though she “wasn’t very happy” with some of the care workers who were hired to help care for her.

“Eventually, she bonded with one lady and it worked out quite well until we had to put her in a care home,” Ken said. “We were offered a spot in Vernon so we took that. She was there eight months before we could bring her back to Kamloops at The Hamlets and it worked well there.”

This Sunday’s walk in Kamloops will be held on the indoor track at the Tournament Capital Centre. It’s the largest fundraiser for the Alzheimer Society of B.C. and Yukon and it helps provide programs, services and educational resources for the growing number of people in B.C. affected by the disease.

“The purpose of the walk is to celebrate and recognize the path that people walk with dementia as caregivers, as people living with that experience,” Maribeth Friesen, the Alzheimer Society’s regional Community Services Manager for the Interior, told CFJC Today.

“It’s really to bring the community together and to raise that awareness and to raise funds for the society.”

Registration and check-in for the Kamloops walk starts at 9:00 a.m. Sunday, with opening ceremonies to follow at 10:00 a.m.

“I have a team and I’ve been out talking to a few folks,” Ezzard said of his fundraising efforts. “We had a goal of $5,000 and I think we’re past that now. I’ve got a lot of family coming out to the walk.”

“I’ve never done anything like this before but we told our family that this would be a way to honour Marilyn.”

Ken and Marilyn met in a psychiatric nursing class in Manitoba and they moved to Kamloops in 1966 to work at the Tranquille Sanitorium. While Ken left the nursing profession shortly after for a career in the insurance business, Marilyn went on to become the first psychiatric nurse at Royal Inland Hospital.

The couple’s close connection to dementia because of their work as nurses is why Marilyn was never comfortable talking about her diagnosis. Ken said she feared she would have been institutionalized if people found out.

“Back in the ‘60s, we made a promise to each other that we would not put either one of us in institutionalized care and that also made our journey a bit more difficult to navigate,” added Ken. “She didn’t want anyone to know she had Alzheimer’s.

But now in 2026, he said things are different and more people are willing to talk about their diagnoses.

“The stigma is leaving,” Ken said. “The best thing I can say to anybody is to talk about it and make it worthwhile. There is still a lot of life left. I took Marilyn on a cruise after she was diagnosed.”

“You may have Alzheimer’s but you’re still alive.”

You can find more about Ken and Marilyn’s story and this weekend’s walk here.

by Victor Kaisar

Kamloops Walk for Alzheimer’s Sunday to honour Ken and Marilyn Ezzard

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