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I’m someone who’ll stop everything I’m doing just to take in a beautiful sunset or full moon, so you can bet your bottom dollar I wasn’t about to miss the last total solar eclipse visible in Montreal until 2205.
I, of course, wasn’t the only excited one. Accommodations in cities in the path of its totality were booked months in advance as millions of eclipse chasers descended to experience the special moment. Even after reading everything I could on it, I now know I wasn’t remotely prepared for what a total solar eclipse looks and feels like.
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The hush in the crowd, the sudden silence of the birds, the light turning this surreal sepia silver and then dramatically being swallowed up by darkness. The sudden chill and drop in temperature, thousands of people looking up at the same moment to gaze into something unworldly. And then, the spontaneous cheers, claps and tears of many, the sheer, unabashed joy of a communal experience that left so many of us feeling so small, yet so privileged to have been there, at that time, in that moment, everything aligning perfectly for that one minute and 30 seconds of pure magic, something no photographic image or second-hand explanation will ever do justice to.
If I’ve ever experienced a “You had to have been there” moment in my life, I think this was it.
But not everyone hopped on this celestial joyride. To my surprise, I saw more than a few people scoffing at the attention the eclipse was receiving and occasionally even mocking people’s enthusiasm. “All that furor for a few minutes of midday darkness,” said one person online. “Sorry, eclipses have always underwhelmed me,” another said. “Why all the fuss about a predictable alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun?” wrote someone else.
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Perhaps they found the eclipse fangirling a little excessive and annoying. Or perhaps they made the unfortunate mistake of believing a total eclipse is no different than a partial one. Spoiler alert: it’s not. In her 1982 essay, Total Eclipse, the exquisite Annie Dillard explains that “seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.”
Truth is, I think we needed this moment of magic. Since the pandemic, I feel there has been a measurable uptick of ugliness, unkindness, disconnect and polarization. Skygazing with friends and strangers on the St. Lawrence River waterfront, knowing others were simultaneously gathering on Mount Royal and Parc Jean-Drapeau, also looking up in amazement, sharing that very same experience with me, made me feel more connected to my own and other people’s humanity. It felt healing and unifying in some strange way.
I know the world is often a disheartening mess and that people have much to worry and grieve about. It’s precisely why anything that can inspire wonder and joy, even momentarily, and remind us of how deeply we’re all connected to each other, and this Earth, should be honoured. The world needs more childish excitement, exuberance and the kind of joyful earnestness some confuse for naiveté. Why not allow a little more room for whimsy and beauty?
Unless you travel to future eclipse destinations — like Spain in 2026, Morocco in 2027, Australia in 2028 and Namibia in 2030; yes, I Googled it — and the weather co-operates, you’ll most likely never get to see this rare astronomical phenomenon again. It was worth momentarily stopping in your tracks for it.
Just because we’re lucky to live in a time where the alignment and timing of the eclipse can be scientifically predicted down to the nanosecond doesn’t make it any less extraordinary. As author Terry Pratchett wrote, “It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.”
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada. She can be reached on X @toulastake
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