There are two kinds of eclipses I love. The first being the third installment of the Twilight series— Eclipse. Something we don't talk about is how Dakota Fanning carried Stephenie Meyer's little saga on bareBACK with nothing more than a set of red contact lenses, and this is none more evident than in Eclipse. So there's that.
The second is A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE— which is occurring across Canada on April 8, 2024— and will see parts of the country PLUNGE into a few minutes of daytime darkness. Let me put on "Total Eclipse of the Heart (Glee Cast Version)" first and then I'll explain.
Okay, so now that Jesse St. James is in my ears... *cracks knuckles*: A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. When the Earth, Sun and Moon are perfectly aligned, the sun looks TOTALLY covered. Look, here's a GIF I found:
Depending on how much the Moon blocks the Sun during an eclipse, there are PARTIAL and ANNULAR eclipses too. But a total solar eclipse is a pretty rare event. Luckily a bunch of Canadian cities are right in the "path of totality" and will be able to witness it (if it's not too cloudy).
And people are obviously freaking out— especially as Canada and the U.S. won't experience another total solar eclipse until 2044. Niagara Falls (in the path of totality) has even declared a state of emergency as a precautionary measure for the giant tourist spike it's about to see. Please!!!! Someone get Dakota Fanning playing Jane Volturi over to Clifton Hill to do crowd control or something. OUR NATION DEPENDS ON IT.
But like HELLO! It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Here are all the Canadian cities that'll experience a few minutes of total darkness during the solar eclipse according to The Weather Network (all times are local times):
Niagara Falls, Ontario - totality begins at 3:18:18 PM
Hamilton, Ontario - totality begins at 3:18:12 PM
Kingston, Ontario - totality begins at 3:22:15 PM
Montreal, QC - totality begins at 3:26:49 PM
Sherbrooke, QC - totality begins at 3:27:42 PM
Fredericton, NB - totality begins at 4:33:49 PM
Miramichi, NB - totality begins at 4:34:24 PM
Summerside, PE - totality begins at 4:37:08 PM
Gander, NL - totality begins at 5:12:59 PM
While only a few cities will experience a full total solar eclipse, a ton of others will experience a pretty cool partial one too. These include Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor, Sudbury, Thunderbay, St. John's, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. You can check out the full list plus times here!
While *I* personally will be looking DIRECTLY into the solar eclipse in my ongoing attempt to feel something, gain wisdom, grow powers etc... please don't be doing that. It can do permanent damage to your eyeballs after only 5 seconds. Okay... wait... that's bad. FINE, I won't then. Scientists... you win again.
As with other things in life, protection is key. If you didn't snag those eclipse glasses in time, you can use other things like a home-made pinhole projector. Thanks to NASA, you can learn how to make one here.
