A partial eclipse seen through clouds.

Experiencing the Total Solar Eclipse in Prince Edward County

I’m not an umbraphile; I don’t have the will or the funds to globe-trot every six months dur­ing eclipse sea­son­ing, attempt­ing to catch the best clear-sky view of the Moon’s shad­ow. And despite not try­ing, I’ve been in the pres­ence of four solar eclipses: the annu­lar eclipse of May 10, 1994, the total eclipse of August 21, 2017, the annu­lar eclipse of Octo­ber 14, 2023, and the total eclipse of April 8, 2024.

May 10, 1994

I was nine years old, and it was a school day. Based on my research, the path of annu­lar total­i­ty passed over most of Toron­to at about 1:24 pm, but my school was sev­er­al kilo­me­tres north of its reach. My only actu­al mem­o­ry is going out­side dur­ing the after­noon recess and tak­ing brief glimpses towards the Sun through a pair of cheap Robo­cop-inspired sun­glass­es with blink­ing red LEDs on the front. The lunch ladies—our term for the break supervisors—kept telling us not to stare at the Sun, or we’d go blind.

August 21, 2017

Although this was a total solar eclipse in some parts of Amer­i­ca, it was mere­ly a par­tial eclipse in Toron­to, with a max­i­mum solar obscu­ra­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 70% at 2:32 pm. My only mem­o­ry is tak­ing Porthos, my cam­era, and sev­er­al neu­tral-den­si­ty gels to the dog park and tak­ing pho­tos of the cres­cent-shaped sun­light fil­ter­ing onto the soil through the foliage.

October 14, 2023

This annu­lar eclipse crossed the Unit­ed States but was mere­ly par­tial in Toron­to. I was cycling home from a group pho­tog­ra­phy les­son when the par­tial eclipse achieved a max­i­mum local obscu­ra­tion of almost 27% at 1:09 pm. That amount wasn’t much, but it wasn’t noth­ing, either; that after­noon was hazy, so the slight decrease in sun­light gave the impres­sion of a Decem­ber after­noon when the Sun is far low­er in the sky. I didn’t have eclipse glass­es, so I made do with watch­ing the funky-look­ing shad­ows.

April 8, 2024: total eclipse in Ontario

News of a total eclipse cross­ing through Ontario fil­tered into my news­feed in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary. It was slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing that Toron­to would be just out­side the path of total­i­ty, but that path was a man­age­able dis­tance away. After order­ing four pairs of super rad eclipse glass­es, I sug­gest­ed Lily and I make a day trip to Nia­gara-on-the-Lake with friends to view the spec­ta­cle.

Word of the eclipse start­ed fil­ter­ing into the main­stream news in late Feb­ru­ary and ear­ly March. Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, school boards across south­ern Ontario shift­ed their staff pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment days to coin­cide with April 8, ensur­ing curi­ous chil­dren wouldn’t go blind on their watch. Pub­lic author­i­ties between Hamil­ton and Nia­gara Falls were pre­dict­ing an influx of mil­lions of region­al tourists. And final­ly, days before the eclipse, Nia­gara Region announced a state of emer­gency in prepa­ra­tion for the event. It was rescind­ed an hour after the eclipse had passed, with author­i­ties cred­it­ing (or blam­ing) low­er-than-expect­ed eclipse atten­dance through­out the region on the announce­ment.

After con­sid­er­ing the atten­dance esti­mates and imag­in­ing all those peo­ple dri­ving along the QEW—often packed with­out the added stim­u­lus of a once-in-a-life­time event—our four­some agreed to an alter­nate loca­tion with a sim­i­lar total­i­ty dura­tion: Sand­banks Provin­cial Park in Prince Edward Coun­ty.

About a week before the eclipse, it became evi­dent that the weath­er had no inten­tion of coop­er­at­ing. Mete­o­rol­o­gists pre­dict­ed a low-pres­sure sys­tem would blan­ket much of south­ern Ontario with clouds. I had ini­tial­ly assumed the ear­ly fore­cast would prove wrong, but as the day approached, it remained stub­born­ly cloudy. The entire point of schlep­ping into the path of total­i­ty ver­sus set­tling on 98–99% solar cov­er­age from home is to view the Sun’s coro­na and promi­nences. But an over­cast sky nul­li­fies that expe­ri­ence, ren­der­ing the added effort point­less. The sec­ondary effect of expe­ri­enc­ing brief dark­ness doesn’t require being in the path of total­i­ty. Sure, it’s slight­ly dark­er dark­ness, but is it worth the trav­el time?

Ulti­mate­ly, we decid­ed to make the trip. We were com­mit­ted, had post-eclipse din­ner reser­va­tions in Welling­ton, and, to a cer­tain extent, hoped to get lucky. On the morn­ing of April 8, mete­o­rol­o­gists fore­cast that regions east toward Kingston could expe­ri­ence high-lev­el cloud cov­er, poten­tial­ly giv­ing way to hazy views of the eclipse.

On the dri­ve from Toron­to toward Prince Edward Coun­ty, we expe­ri­enced numer­ous breaks in the clouds. The route through PEC was down­right sun­ny. The clouds returned as we approached Sand­banks Provin­cial Park. We also dis­cov­ered that our orig­i­nal des­ti­na­tion, Dunes Beach, was packed, and the park’s war­dens were direct­ing over­flow vis­i­tors toward Out­let Beach. But our four­some was secret­ly a five­some because we had brought Porthos, and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the park doesn’t per­mit dogs on Out­let Beach.

A partial eclipse seen through clouds.
A par­tial view of the eclipse through the blan­ket of clouds.

We cir­cled back and found park­ing in an emp­ty lot near the park gates. There was a water­front par­kette that was not asso­ci­at­ed with the Provin­cial Park, about a ten-minute walk down the road. We gath­ered our things and start­ed the hike. While wait­ing to cross the road, a man on a scoot­er pulled up beside us, com­pli­ment­ed our dog, and casu­al­ly sug­gest­ed that instead of walk­ing ten min­utes to watch the eclipse at a pub­lic beach, we’re very wel­come to enjoy it from his pri­vate beach just two min­utes away. The four of us exchanged con­fer­ring glances and agreed to his offer. He intro­duced him­self as John, explained where to go, and rode ahead on his scoot­er.

After set­tling on the beach, we resigned our­selves to the clouds. The par­tial­ly eclipsed Sun peeked out a hand­ful of times, but not dur­ing the most intense por­tion of the eclipse. The last cou­ple min­utes before total­i­ty were gen­uine­ly won­drous to behold. No amount of research and graphs pre­pared me for the expe­ri­ence of wit­ness­ing just how quick­ly the dark­est dark­ness falls. The expe­ri­ence of watch­ing dark­ness encroach at an accel­er­at­ing pace upon such a vast out­door space was uncan­ny. I had for­got­ten to bring my light meter, so an objec­tive light read­ing was out of the ques­tion. It reached a lev­el of dark­ness equiv­a­lent to astro­nom­i­cal twi­light. How­ev­er, unlike dur­ing twi­light, where a slight gra­di­ent of bright­ness emanates from the west and dark­ens towards the east, the entire vis­i­ble hori­zon had a warm sun­set glow dur­ing total­i­ty.

As the Moon’s umbra swept past our point on the beach, the Sun’s light ramped up in bright­ness as quick­ly as it dis­ap­peared just min­utes ear­li­er. Then, about 45–60 min­utes after total­i­ty had passed and we were in the car dri­ving toward Welling­ton for din­ner, the clouds start­ed to part, and the sun beamed down on us to demon­strate that nature has a sense of irony.

I set my iPhone on a tri­pod to cap­ture a time­lapse of the eclipse.

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