World Diabetes Day 2018 Recap

Were you not able to make it out to our WDD2018 event or you just want to relive the celebrations? Well look no further! On November 14th, 2018 Banting House NHSC held our World Diabetes Day 2018 celebrations! With months of planning behind the event it was great to see it finally come to fruition. This blog will capture the successes of the event and the lessons we learned to be applied to World Diabetes Day 2019.

Let’s start with the successes. Approximately 125 people braved the cold to take part in our celebrations! The night started off with an hour of tours of the house and family fun games outside. Guests got to see the birthplace of insulin and learn more about the life of Dr. Banting- some visiting for the first time and other make this an annual trip. One of the hit games was matching the drink to the amount of sugar in contained. Families and kids were shocked to learn how much sugar was in a bottle of Mountain Dew (19 sugar cubes to be exact!). During this hour Julie Atchison from CTV London News covered the weather live from Sir Frederick Banting Square and some of our guests got to be featured on television.

Next, we had our formal ceremony from 7:00pm-7:30pm. We started by recognizing two of our amazing volunteers! The 2018 Regional Partnership Award was presented to Darcy DeCaluwe and his company Stone in Style for donating his time and staff to remodel and up-keep Sir Frederick Banting Square. Darcy has also supported our Banting & Friends event and was the one who conceive our commemorative brick campaign. Our Volunteer of the Year Award went to Gord Miller who represents Diabetes Canada as the regional chair of Southwestern Ontario. To celebrate the end of the First World War and Dr. Banting’s involvement in it, we had Rev. Nick Wells a military chaplain reenactor read a speech before we unveiled the special legion bricks. Our volunteers then read Dear Dr. Banting letters that have been written in Banting’s bedroom over the past year. These were letters written in different languages and were translated by our volunteers. This showcased the effect Dr. Banting has on people from around the world. We ended our formal ceremony by unveiling the new commemoration bricks. Our guests rushed over to see their bricks installed for the first time. We live streamed this whole ceremony on our Facebook page and you can watch the video here. 

And now onto the things we learned from the day. The main lesson: a critical path is very important! Critical paths are essentially a list of all the things that need to get done for an event broken by time and person who will complete the task. Essentially, it allows you to see the progress you’ve made in event planning. This year we tried to compile different WDD critical paths from past years to create the master critical path. We realized on the day-of that we forgot to add a few small tasks including buying batteries and checking that you have all of your extension cords to prevent last minute runs to the store/home. Also, remember that its never too early to start planning an event! We’re already getting the 2019 critical path ready while everything is still fresh in our minds. Thank you to everyone who helped make the day possible! We can’t wait to for next year’s event!

This post was written by Rachel Delle Palme, Graduate Research Assistant at
Banting House NHSC. Rachel is currently completing her M.A. in Public History at
Western University.