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GANDER –
Residents of a small fishing community along the south coast of Newfoundland prepared on Monday morning to celebrate their unique place in solar eclipse history.
Michael Ward, the town clerk manager for Burgeo, N.L., says British cartographer Capt. James Cook experienced a partial eclipse of the sun in 1766 on a small island just off the community’s coast. Cook was so taken with the experience, he named the isle Eclipse Island, Ward said.
For Monday’s eclipse, events scheduled in the town of about 1,175 people will include the unveiling of a 2.4-metre-high solar-powered beacon on the small island, as well as music, dance and smudging ceremonies led by the Burgeo First Nation, Ward said.
“I’ve got 490 pairs of eclipse glasses, and I’m hoping that by the end of the day, I’ve got none,” he said in an interview.
The eclipse’s path of totality will travel from Newfoundland’s southwestern tip of Port aux Basques, to the Bonavista Peninsula along the island’s east coast.
A large celebration was also planned on Monday in the central Newfoundland town of Gander, where astronomers predicted the sky would fall dark for more than two minutes as the moon blocked the sun’s path.
In the cafeteria at Gander’s College of the North Atlantic campus, a cheer went up as someone announced that the sun was finally shining after a cloudy morning. A community viewing party is planned in the campus’s parking lot, and by 3 p.m. several people had begun setting up their telescopes there.
At Newfoundland Accents, a nearby gift shop, employee Pamela Inder said there were “lots and lots” of people in town for the day’s spectacle.
“It’s busy, there’s a lot of excitement,” Inder said after she rang up a few customers’ purchases. “That’s been the whole talk for the past week, everyone saying, ‘Are you going to watch it, do you have any glasses?”‘
Galina Sherren, an undergraduate astrophysics student at Memorial University in St. John’s, said the eclipse was a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity — perhaps quite literally, as the next total eclipse visible from Newfoundland won’t be until 2070, she added.
“I’ve heard it can elicit quite the emotional response from people,” she said. “I don’t think I had thought about it until I came here, and today I’m really like, ‘Oh my God, like this is truly a unique experience.”‘
People in southwestern Newfoundland are expected to start seeing the moon move across the sun just after 4 p.m. local time. The island is the last spot in North America where people will be able to view the total eclipse.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 8, 2024.
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