A Lasting Legacy

A tribute to Daryle Roberts

Daryle Roberts. September 16, 1951 - March 15, 2026.

Last week I sat with a man who was well loved in a hospice he had helped build. Not metaphorically. The fundraising that brought Kelowna’s hospice house into existence bears his fingerprints, and there he was inside it, being held by a place that exists in part because of him. I cannot think of a more complete life than that.

Daryle Roberts left us on Sunday. My heart goes to his husband Steve, and to every person in this valley whose life was quietly, persistently made better by this man’s presence.

I first heard Daryle’s name before I lived here. It was the summer of 2008. I was visiting Kelowna, sitting at dinner with local friends, when someone announced we were all going to “The Centre” afterward. I had no idea what The Centre was. What I learned that night was that the queer community in Kelowna had a place to gather, a physical home, and that a man named Daryle Roberts had been instrumental in making it happen. He was president of the Okanagan Rainbow Coalition at the time, and under his leadership the community centre at 1476 Water Street had come to life, funded in part by a $35,000 grant from the We’re Funny That Way Foundation. For those of us who know what it means to be queer in a smaller city, to have no gathering place, no physical proof that you belong here too, the weight of what he did is not easy to overstate.

I moved to Kelowna in 2012 and became president of what was then Okanagan Rainbow Coalition, the organization Daryle had shaped. It later became Okanagan Pride, and eventually Kelowna Pride. I remember many Saturday nights at The Centre, volunteers at the door, community members finding each other in that warm and slightly improbable space. Every one of those evenings rested on a foundation Daryle helped pour.

But The Centre was one chapter. As Executive Director of the Living Positive Resource Centre and its earlier iterations, Daryle spent years rallying community members and leaders to raise thousands of dollars for people living with HIV. At the 8th Annual Okanagan Family AIDS Walk in 2004, more than 450 people came out to Waterfront Park, the largest crowd the event had ever seen, and together they raised over $46,000. “People are recognizing the need for our services,” Daryle said that day, “and their support today was tremendous.” He understood that a community is not an abstraction. It is what you do on a Tuesday when no one is watching. It is who you show up for.

And then the hospice. In December 2007, on World AIDS Day, the Living Positive Resource Centre presented $30,000 to the BC Cancer Foundation’s Holding Hands for Hospice campaign. More than $50,000 raised over two years through the AIDS Walk and other fundraising efforts, directed toward building a place where people could be cared for at the end of their lives. “We fully support this important project,” Daryle said at the time. Years later, he was cared for there himself.

When I visited him last week to say goodbye, we hugged. He gripped my hand. The grip of a man who had spent a lifetime holding things together. I will carry and cherish this memory.

Daryle Roberts made the Okanagan a more humane place. He did it through decades of unglamorous, essential, loving work. He leaves behind a husband, a community, and a legacy that will outlast all of us.

Rest now, Daryle. Let others take up the mantle.