‘Super cool’ eclipse dazzles skywatchers
Locals didn’t get totality, but event ‘something to see’
Waterloo Region solar eclipse watchers were awestruck Monday.
Dozens of people flocked to Victoria Park in Kitchener with eclipse glasses in hand.
“It’s looking like someone took a big chunk out of the sun,” Sidney Harper said at 3:07 p.m., 11 minutes before the eclipse’s peak. “It’s super cool.”
When the peak arrived, the Kitchener woman, 19, was too mesmerized to talk other than to say, “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“It looks like dusk,” said her mother, Madelon Harper, 53. “It reminds me of after a fire with that kind of haze in the air. It’s strange.”
She works at the (appropriately named) Sunset Grill.
“We were crazy busy today but it died off around 2 o’clock,” Harper said.
People were either heading out to see the eclipse, she said, or going home to stay away from the sun if they didn’t have the proper glasses.
The eclipse peaked at 3:18 p.m., with 99 per cent of the sun blocked by the moon.
One per cent isn’t much, but when it comes to the sun, the difference between 100 and 99 is like night and day. Places with a total eclipse were plunged into darkness, but not here.
“I expected it to be pitch black,” said Madelon Harper. “We didn’t get pitch black, but it was definitely something to see. Once in a lifetime.”
The peak lasted only a few minutes. The eclipse ended at 4:30 p.m.
Two hours before the start of the eclipse, Illz Grafikz was one of two men putting in a new driveway at a house on Dalegrove Drive in Kitchener.
“That will be something to see,” Grafikz said, adding he would “love to take a quick look” at the sun but probably wouldn’t.
“I don’t have any special glasses,” he said.
“I don’t want to damage my eyes or anything. I’m 45 years old. I’m already losing my eyesight.”
Grafikz sees the eclipse as magical or spiritual. “I’m an Aquarius,” he said. “I didn’t believe in astrology before, but my ex-girlfriend taught me about it and everything was just exact about my personality.
“Aquarians are supposed to be responsible for helping to save the world. And I’m like, ‘Wow, I’m going to do this driveway first, and then maybe I’ll see what I can do.’ ”
What did Grafikz plan to do at the peak of the eclipse?
“Maybe I’ll make a wish,” he said. “Maybe something to my brother who passed away not too long ago.”
With Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” playing on the radio behind Grafikz, a reporter wished him and his co-worker luck with the driveway.
“We don’t need luck,” he said. “We’ve got the solar eclipse.”