The Kamloops Brain Injury Association has been helping brain injury survivors since 1986 (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

NON-PROFIT SERIES

STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL: The Kamloops Brain Injury Association

Jul 23, 2019 | 1:41 PM

KAMLOOPS — In the third installment of our series Struggle For Survival, we feature the Kamloops Brain Injury Association. The non-profit has been helping brain injury survivors in the city since 1986. The KBIA offers programs and a space downtown for people to talk and work through their struggles.

Rick Parker is working on a stained glass window in the Kamloops Brain Injury Association workshop.

It’s one of Parker’s many projects — both stained glass art and bird houses that he makes by hand. He’s picked up these hobbies ever since his brain injury three years ago.

“It helps with the planning as to what I’m going to be doing, and it also gives me that feeling of accomplishment,” said Parker. “Being able to do something, because after my accident, I thought I was going to wind up doing nothing.”

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Rick Parker leans on the Kamloops Brain Injury Association in his recovery from a motorcycle crash in 2016 (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

Parker was involved in a near-death motorcycle crash in August 2016. He and some friends were shooting a motorcycle video near Highland Valley Copper when a deer darted onto the road and swiped Parker off his bike.

“I spent 10 days in the hospital. I have no memory from five minutes before the accident to five days after the accident. My brain had shut down,” said Parker.

Parker’s wife discovered the Kamloops Brain Injury Association and it has made all the difference in his recovery.

The KBIA serves many people like Parker who have suffered life-altering brain injuries. The hope is to help them live a normal life.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of potential members, and we really work to make this a comfortable place for survivors of a brain injury,” said KBIA executive director David Johnson. “One of the common things that goes with brain injury is depression and anxiety, and so sometimes just getting out of the house is really hard, especially if you have nothing to go to.”

That’s where KBIA’s downtown office comes into play. It’s where brain injury survivors come when they nowhere else to turn.

“We’re the place of last resort,” noted Johnson. “If you have no money and you have a brain injury, who’s going to help you? If you have some money, sure you can go out and hire help, or you can go to a store and buy something. But for the folks who can’t work, that’s an issue.”

The Kamloops Brain Injury Association’s biggest fundraiser every year is the Gur Singh Memorial Golf Tournament with this year’s goal of raising $60,000. But Johnson says it’s been difficult to sign people up the last couple years.

Numbers are down for the Gur Singh Memorial Golf Tournament, a big fundraiser for the Kamloops Brain Injury Association (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

“I know a number of non-profits that have stopped their golf tournaments. We are still going. It’s successful, it’s working,” he said. “We would like to have more people, but golf isn’t necessarily the interest of everybody in town anymore.”

With numbers down for the golf tournament, it means the KBIA has to dig more more funding elsewhere.

“While we’re a non-profit, I spend more time worrying about money, I swear, than some of our for-profit small businesses in town do,” said Johnson.

However the money comes in, people like Parker appreciate a place like KBIA in their journey of recovery.