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Turning 65 this summer won’t mark retirement for Camp Banting, Canada’s oldest summer camp for children living with Type 1 diabetes, but rather a new beginning.
Last fall, Diabetes Canada, which has run Camp Banting since the mid-1980s, said the Eastern Ontario camp would be shut down and amalgamated with another diabetes camp near Huntsville. That didn’t sit well with Banting’s backers, who felt the need to preserve their beloved institution.
So Banting is back, fuelled by alumni dollars and staffed with volunteers, and it will run for a one-week session at its new home at the YMCA/YWCA Bonnenfant Centre in Dunrobin during the week of Aug. 19.
“A lot of us felt so very, very sad when (Diabetes Canada) made the decision to stop the camp,” said Dr. Sarah Lawrence, Camp Banting’s medical director and head of endocrinology at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
“Then a lot of the alumni came out and began posting comments on Facebook about how incredibly important camp had been to them. I got goosebumps reading some of them. And I thought, ‘You know what? We can’t let this go.’ ”
With the backing of CHEO and the CHEO Foundation and the blessing of Diabetes Canada, which owns the rights to the Camp Banting name, but allowed the Ottawa group to use it, Camp Banting was reborn.
In many ways, Camp Banting is just like any other summer camp, with crafts, swimming and canoeing, scary campfire tales and even that summer camp staple, the “s’more” (after careful carb counting and insulin adjustments, that is).
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“The thing with diabetes camp, it removes that feeling of isolation,” said Lawrence, who never went to camp as a kid, but has worked with Camp Banting since 1997.
“Kids come into the clinic all year and they talk about their time at camp,” she said.
“Diabetes is a very demanding condition. There’s fingerpicks for blood checks four or eight times a day. They’re given insulin at least four times a day. Often, these kids are the only ones in their school that have to do that. It can be very isolating.
“When they come to camp and they see that everyone around them gets it and is facing the same things, that sense of community is just fantastic.”
Diabetes affects approximately 11 million Canadians and is broken into two types. In Type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system attacks the pancreas and limits or eliminates production of insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar. The onset of type 2 diabetes, which makes up about 90 per cent of all diabetes cases, usually takes place in adulthood. It occurs when the body can’t use or produce enough of its own insulin.
Camp Banting is named after Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian physician who pioneered insulin treatment with his partner, Dr. Charles Best, and was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1923.
Sarah Hamilton spent seven summers at Camp Banting after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was eight. She now works at CHEO’s diabetes clinic and is on staff at Camp Banting.
“When you’re there, you’re making friends with people who understand,” Hamilton said. “You don’t have to explain about blood sugar tests or why you’re taking insulin.”
The camp has doctors, nurses and dieticians on staff to help kids understand the disease and coach them on how to manage their conditions.
“You learn how to calculate your carbs and take insulin. You think you’re just going to have fun and you don’t realize that you’re learning how to do it. It’s a sneaky way to teach.”
Diabetes Canada is still hosting Ottawa-area kids at its Huntsville location for two weeks, but many parents are nervous about having their children a four-hour drive away with such a medically fragile condition, Lawrence said. Plus, she said, an amalgamated camp had lost some of the hometown feel of Camp Banting.
Diabetes Camp isn’t cheap. It costs $1,200 a week per child, though the camp has a sliding scale of fees based on each family’s ability to pay. But, even if every child paid full fees, the camp would face a $15,000 shortfall on its $75,000 budget, Lawrence said. It has launched a gofundme campaign to help cover costs and allow it to subsidize even more children.
To learn more about the camp and its history, to register a child or to contribute to the fundraising, visit campbanting.ca
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
Last fall, Diabetes Canada, which has run Camp Banting since the mid-1980s, said the Eastern Ontario camp would be shut down and amalgamated with another diabetes camp near Huntsville. That didn’t sit well with Banting’s backers, who felt the need to preserve their beloved institution.
So Banting is back, fuelled by alumni dollars and staffed with volunteers, and it will run for a one-week session at its new home at the YMCA/YWCA Bonnenfant Centre in Dunrobin during the week of Aug. 19.
“A lot of us felt so very, very sad when (Diabetes Canada) made the decision to stop the camp,” said Dr. Sarah Lawrence, Camp Banting’s medical director and head of endocrinology at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
“Then a lot of the alumni came out and began posting comments on Facebook about how incredibly important camp had been to them. I got goosebumps reading some of them. And I thought, ‘You know what? We can’t let this go.’ ”
With the backing of CHEO and the CHEO Foundation and the blessing of Diabetes Canada, which owns the rights to the Camp Banting name, but allowed the Ottawa group to use it, Camp Banting was reborn.
In many ways, Camp Banting is just like any other summer camp, with crafts, swimming and canoeing, scary campfire tales and even that summer camp staple, the “s’more” (after careful carb counting and insulin adjustments, that is).
Related
“The thing with diabetes camp, it removes that feeling of isolation,” said Lawrence, who never went to camp as a kid, but has worked with Camp Banting since 1997.
“Kids come into the clinic all year and they talk about their time at camp,” she said.
“Diabetes is a very demanding condition. There’s fingerpicks for blood checks four or eight times a day. They’re given insulin at least four times a day. Often, these kids are the only ones in their school that have to do that. It can be very isolating.
“When they come to camp and they see that everyone around them gets it and is facing the same things, that sense of community is just fantastic.”
Diabetes affects approximately 11 million Canadians and is broken into two types. In Type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system attacks the pancreas and limits or eliminates production of insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar. The onset of type 2 diabetes, which makes up about 90 per cent of all diabetes cases, usually takes place in adulthood. It occurs when the body can’t use or produce enough of its own insulin.
Camp Banting is named after Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian physician who pioneered insulin treatment with his partner, Dr. Charles Best, and was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1923.
Sarah Hamilton spent seven summers at Camp Banting after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was eight. She now works at CHEO’s diabetes clinic and is on staff at Camp Banting.
“When you’re there, you’re making friends with people who understand,” Hamilton said. “You don’t have to explain about blood sugar tests or why you’re taking insulin.”
The camp has doctors, nurses and dieticians on staff to help kids understand the disease and coach them on how to manage their conditions.
“You learn how to calculate your carbs and take insulin. You think you’re just going to have fun and you don’t realize that you’re learning how to do it. It’s a sneaky way to teach.”
Diabetes Canada is still hosting Ottawa-area kids at its Huntsville location for two weeks, but many parents are nervous about having their children a four-hour drive away with such a medically fragile condition, Lawrence said. Plus, she said, an amalgamated camp had lost some of the hometown feel of Camp Banting.
Diabetes Camp isn’t cheap. It costs $1,200 a week per child, though the camp has a sliding scale of fees based on each family’s ability to pay. But, even if every child paid full fees, the camp would face a $15,000 shortfall on its $75,000 budget, Lawrence said. It has launched a gofundme campaign to help cover costs and allow it to subsidize even more children.
To learn more about the camp and its history, to register a child or to contribute to the fundraising, visit campbanting.ca
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
