Donor Spotlight: The Legacy of the Arlie Parks Scholarship in Memory of Dr. Kenneth McIntyre
Marjorie and Arlie Parks, lifelong friends of Dr. Kenneth McIntyre and Donald McLaren, made a generous lasting gift through their will to establish a scholarship in memory of Dr. McIntyre at the University of Prince Edward Island. The four friends shared deep ties to Montague, Prince Edward Island, where Dr. McIntyre’s father, Dr. Preston McIntyre, was a highly respected community physician.
Dr. McIntyre graduated from Prince of Wales College (one of UPEI’s founding institutions) in 1958 and earned his medical degree from Dalhousie University in 1964. He came from an Island family devoted to health care.
Mr. McLaren, executor of Marjorie and Arlie Parks’s estate, fulfilled their wish to support future doctors by creating an annual award for a UPEI student entering a medical school. This vision became reality through a generous $60,000 endowment to the University in 1995.
Over the years, the Arlie Parks Scholarship has helped many UPEI students pursue their education in medical schools across Canada.
This year, the story comes full circle with Island resident Lauren Reid (MSc’25), the 2025 recipient of the scholarship. Lauren is one of the first 20 Island students to begin their doctor of medicine (MD) studies in August 2025 at the new regional campus of Memorial University’s Faculty of Medicine right here at UPEI—a historic milestone. (The UPEI site will operate as a regional campus of Memorial until a joint degree is established in the future.) For Lauren, the scholarship provides financial support and meaningful encouragement as she begins her journey to become a doctor. She has expressed deep gratitude for the scholarship and the legacy of generosity it represents.
When the scholarship was created to honour Dr. McIntyre, few could have imagined that the UPEI campus would one day host a medical degree program and establish a cutting edge interprofessional health education facility. Marjorie and Arlie Parks’s vision, and the friendship that inspired it, now plays a part in shaping the future of medical students studying to become physicians right here at home.
