The unforgettable experience of a total solar eclipse

Once a catchphrase starts being circulated, it takes on a life of its own.

And so the news media have been declaring, with unusual unanimity, that the solar eclipse scheduled for 10:23 this morning, Pacific Daylight Time, is “the only total eclipse of the sun in Canada in the last century.” That is simply wrong. I know, because I experienced a total eclipse of the sun on July 10, 1972, on the shores of Northumberland Strait in Nova Scotia.

Perhaps there’s some excuse for the claim about this being the “only total eclipse in Canada in the last century.”

Nova Scotia was the only populated part of Canada to witness the 1972 eclipse. Otherwise, the arc of totality swept across the high Arctic, over Nova Scotia, and out into the Atlantic. It missed Toronto totally.

I happened to be in Nova Scotia that week, teaching a writing course at the United Church’s training centre in Tatamagouche. Naturally, I assigned the eclipse as a topic to students.

Margaret Mundy wrote factually: “The brilliant afternoon light faded. The leaves on the trees hung motionless. The birds twittered here and there, questioning each other with short chirping sounds, until, bewildered by this unusual turn of events, they sought the safety of their nests . . . ” Marion Robinson turned to haiku: Mysterious hush Day nods in darkening slumber At rest, the heart sings. Nova Scotia had actually had another eclipse just two years before, on March 7, 1970. Jean Hamilton, another of my students, capitalized on that coincidence with a satirical blast at the federal government in Ottawa.

She wrote, “For the second time since the Trudeau government assumed office, we have witnessed the incredible spectacle of the sun being extinguished. The utter incompetence of a government that allows such a thing to happen boggles the mind.

“The Prime Minister has said that the government was aware of no objections. This we know to be sheer fabrication. A delegation from the P.E.I. potato growers met with the Minister of the Environment as soon as plans for the eclipse became public. “The delegation pointed out two things: “First, that this eclipse had been planned with no prior consultation with the provinces.

“Second, that this is a clear case of blatant discrimination against the Maritimes, and especially P.E.I. Did the sun go out in Alberta with its oil-well millionaires? Did the sun go out in the Prime Minister’s home constituency of Mount Royal?

“It did not. It was only in the Maritimes that this was allowed to happen. The same government that filed a formal protest against the Amchitka bomb test on a distant Aleutian island stood by in complete silence while this other island, cut off from the rest of Canada by the lack of a causeway, was deprived of sunlight for seven minutes. It’s yet another example of the bureaucratic bungling so characteristic of this government that the actual technology was so hit-or-miss that no safeguards were built in.

“The spectacular was more important than the well-being of taxpayers.”

Of course, I wrote my own paean to the eclipse, trying to capture my own reactions to this extraordinary event. I called it, “The day the sun died.” I felt that I should have been overcome with awe, with mystery, with “peering into the privacy of God.”

Instead, I acted like a jaded victim of science, “bled of passion, embalmed in knowledge.” The poem went on, The moon limpets onto the sun. The light grows thinner – not dimmer, diluted Spread like the last scrapings of soft silver butter All over the land. To the west The sky frosts itself orange, a jaundiced sunset Without the warmth that tucks the world into night. The sun dies, a black bullet hole in the sky. I wanted the mourning stars to come out, But only the bugs did. The “bugs” were an unexpected side effect of the eclipse. “My biggest surprise,” I noted in my journal that day, “was not the eclipse itself, but the way that the mosquitoes and blackflies came out so viciously for the few instants that the sun was obscured.”

Obviously, I can’t predict your reactions to today’s eclipse — assuming you’re able to see it. (And assuming you use appropriate safety glasses.) But I’m sure they too will be intensely personal. And that you’ll remember the event for a long time.

I may see the next total eclipse in 2024. But I don’t expect to be around for the 2044, 2045, 2079, and 2097 eclipses. This one had better be worth remembering.

Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. His column appears Mondays. He can be reached by email at rewrite@shaw.ca.