‘It’s Our Super Bowl’: This Science Teacher Is Going All Out for the Solar Eclipse
In Gander, Newfoundland, where the airport was a crossroads of the world until planes no longer needed to refuel on transatlantic flights, one of the last stops before the totality of the eclipse brought a small influx of outsiders.
For much of Monday, the chances of seeing anything looked bleak; Newfoundland is known for its stormy weather.
“We knew that at this time of year there was about a one-in-10 chance of clear skies,” said Hilding Neilson, an assistant professor of physics at Memorial University of Newfoundland and organizer of a viewing event in a parking lot at the College of the North Atlantic, where a crowd of several hundred braved a windy day with temperatures near freezing.
“But you roll the dice and hope for the best,” he added.
Conveniently, the clouds parted just as the partial eclipse was underway and stayed largely out of the way. But when totality came, a heavy dark cloud also came, and it lingered for about three minutes.
People still found community under the clouds.
Michael Mendenhall, a nuclear physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, traveled from Maryland, where he works remotely, to Newfoundland. He brought with him a modified telescope, attached to a homemade viewing screen made from clamps, tape, a square of synthetic material and an oil funnel from a car. It made him something of a celebrity at his viewing spot.
Among the others was a busload of 55 people who made the three-and-a-half-hour trip from St. John’s, the provincial capital, on an outing organized by the local science center.
One of them was Mehrin Naz, a business student who has become an amateur astronomer since moving to Canada from Bangladesh five years ago and discovering Newfoundland’s dark skies.
At home she had rarely seen the moon. She travelled to Gander with two friends, Arun Kumar and Rafisa Mahroz, who are also immigrants. from Bangladesh.
“I forced them to come here,” Ms. Naz said, adding that she also educated other members of her community about the eclipse.
Earlier in the eclipse’s route in Quebec, viewers in Montreal also engaged in sharing the eclipse with others.
Members of Atelier St-James, a nonprofit that supports people experiencing homelessness in Montreal, handed out eclipse glasses alongside free meals ahead of Monday’s cosmic event.
Tristan Arsenault, co-director of the center, has been preparing for the event for weeks. “Everyone in Montreal is participating,” they said. “I don’t want anyone to miss this opportunity because they don’t know where to find glasses or because they don’t have access to the internet.”
At Beaver Lake on the city’s Mount Royal, David Stevenson waited for totality with his children, Adrien, 10, and Iris, 14. Schools across Montreal are all closed Monday to let children experience the event with their families.
“I want to be an astronaut,” Adrien says, pointing a pink instant camera at the very last patch of sun.
“We just did a school project on alien life,” he added. “People think they know what aliens should look like, but they don’t.”
