Arts & Culture
The Banting House National Historic Site in London celebrates the life and career of Sir Frederick Grant Banting who discovered insulin to treat diabetes. While this might not sound like the most romantic place to visit, judge only after you have taken the guided tour with curator Grant Maltman. His stories about emotional visits from people battling the disease and others still researching a cure leaves few on the tour with dry eyes.
Banting’s bedroom is especially moving because this is where the Nobel Prize winning doctor woke up on October 31, 1920 at 2 a.m. and wrote down his preliminary formula for what would become, ten months later, the first effective form of insulin. The bedside clock still registers the time. And if stories about emotional ‘thank you’ notes scrawled on cards don’t move you to appreciate health and happiness, your heart’s not pumping.
Outside, an eternal flame burns until a cure for diabetes is found, and that’s one of the many reasons people afflicted with diabetes, even from other continents, have made the pilgrimage to this site that earned the city the title, “The Birthplace of Insulin.” (442 Adelaide Street N., London, www.diabetes.ca)
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