Thank you all for being here – alumni, field instructors, community partners, retired colleagues – we value our connections with you hope to sustain and deepen them, with this weekend as one important exchange in an ongoing conversation.  

Thank you to the organizing committee – for your care for the history and future of the school, and care for the experience everyone had this weekend.  

To the Alumni Association, and the staff here at the University Club, and in that special thanks to Meggie MacDougall from the Alumni Association for all that she has done to get this Anniversary off the ground.  She helped us figure out where to start, kept us on track, gave us the insider’s scoop on event planning at McMaster, kept her patience with us through hours of edits, was responsive, pulled strings for us (free parking!) and was all around so lovely to work with.  

Faculty members, and our colleagues – who created the band, who opened this event so beautifully, who spoke about programs and initiatives, who created really compelling and interesting and useful displays of research and teaching and advocacy,  started conversations, created video, took photographs, facilitated sewing circles and word clouds…

Event Volunteers – there was so much to do! – hauling all kinds of stuff over, figuring out all the parts of setting it all up, responding to all manner of glitches and problems that arose, greeting people warmly, touring them around, inviting their views at speakers corner…

School staff – Lorna, Darlene and Danielle – for moral and practical support to this whole enterprise, and all of our enterprises. Sarah – it was such a pleasure to work together on this – your reflectiveness, your wide view, sharp analysis and generosity at once. And Tammy… we often say an event like this has lots of moving parts. If all the parts moved when you asked them to – well, that would be one thing. The challenge is that the parts stall. They need greasing, and prodding, and they turn just a bit and then they stall again. And then they start whirling around at a tremendous clip and you need to keep up, keep responding. Really its so many stalling and then racing parts that’s the challenge. It is a miracle that an event like this comes together, and really the miracle is Tammy. 

Thanks all around… everyone is welcome to chat and mingle till 5.