DORVAL, Quebec — I needed a big sky and I was willing to stand for hours in front of a cold, isolated train station to get it.
A total solar eclipse occurred in the sky here, just outside of Montreal, Monday April 8. The views of the larger city would have been incredible, as would the large crowds.
Based on my hunting experiences”Manhattanhenge“Twice in New York last year, restrooms, elbow room, and sightlines would have been valuable. So when my husband objected to large crowds while planning the 'eclipse, I accepted.
Related: I'm taking the train to see the 2024 solar eclipse in Canada. This is why I'm riding the rails
My husband and I live in Ottawa, Ontario, which would have just under 99% on April 8, when the moon passed on the sun. It's good, but we Canadians wanted more because we missed a chance to see the whole thing in August 2017 in favor of Coldplay tickets in Toronto. (No regrets, especially since the band mentioned this solar eclipse right in the middle of the show.)
Fearing road traffic, my husband and I first booked tickets to reach the whole by train. Our original route took us west towards Toronto, but the weather forecast was very cloudy for all stations in Ontario the day before the big event.
So on Sunday evening (April 7), mindful of the crowds and clouds, we made a last minute interprovincial ticket change heading east to the only other overshadowed station near us, outside the urban area from Montreal: Dorval. It's a short shuttle ride from Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, which meant a day of spotting both trains And plane spotting awaited us. And if we were lucky, we could also observe eclipses.
Trains and planes run in my family, you see. I am upset that the rails cross unceded indigenous territory and killed some of the Chinese construction workers who built them, but I also recognize the legacy of my loved ones on the rails.
During the Apollo At that time, my maternal step-grandfather worked for the Penn Central and New York Central railroads in an office in Toronto. My grandmother, his wife, handled paperwork for other Canadian railway lines; she was one of the few people aware of the troop movements inside the country during World War II, as young soldiers were leaving, or at least that's the family tradition.
I ended up working as a journalist in the aerospace industry; my paternal line has held positions at places like the passenger aircraft regulator, Transport Canada, as well as the Royal Canadian Air Force. I was lucky enough to experience childhood adventures in aerospace, like flying a DC-3 to Michigan, racing around the Prime Minister's fleet of private jets, and seeing Santa Claus. visit by helicopter.
But trains also interest me a lot. Several decades ago, I drove a historic locomotive in Wakefield, Quebec. Unfortunately, it is no longer in circulation. Growing up, I was also happy to occasionally climb the the trains exposed at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in my hometown of Ottawa. (I even met Canadian astronaut Roberta Bondar at the science museum in 1992 when I was a kid, so I was very lucky to live so close to it.)
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So, in an attempt to honor my family's dual history of transportation, what better way to spend the hours before an eclipse than outside a small train station, near an airport landing strip? I'm not an expert on large locomotives passing by, at least not yet. But even a quick glance at the cities marked on the cars showed me goods coming from Canada and the United States en route to the port city of Montreal.
VIA Rail, our passenger carrier, also had many trains running on the great west-east corridor where most of the Canadian population lives, between Toronto and Quebec. Audio announcements in English and French cheerfully announced all the small towns these trains would hit, along with the arrival and departure times.
I sat on the shady side of the station with my husband for hours, quietly watching the trains go by and occasionally catching a glimpse of a marmot or pigeon. Restrooms, snacks, and shelters were within walking distance of the station, and a few passenger planes flew overhead. We enjoyed the unseasonably warm temperatures of 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) in comfortable lawn chairs that we carried on the train.
Then we turned back into the sun to catch the eclipse. This was, of course, a spectacle in itself. About 20 minutes before the total eclipse, a rainbow-colored halo began to surround the sun and adorn the thin cirrus clouds above. The light became hazy, like the sun's rays through smoke. Ghostly shadows filtered through the budding trees as refracted sunlight spread around the moon.
I quickly brought out a children's book that I had edited for a friend of mine: “Elizabeth's first total eclipse” by Betty R. Robinson (Tellwell Talent, 2023). Sitting on the sidewalk, I took an obligatory selfie next to the book and the ghost branches.
The shadow deepens in the halo of the sky. Street lights and headlights flashed in the station parking lot, while cars traveling on the nearby Memorial Highway came to a halt. A taxi driver asked for a pair of eclipse glasses; I had extras and, after informing him when totality would hit, I told him to keep the set I had given him.
Armed with my own pair, courtesy of the Western University Space Program in London, Ontario, I watched the solar disk slowly shrink into a thin crescent. Then everything went black. I took off my glasses to safely look up at the sky.
The sun is white crown shone brightly, tripling the diameter of the sun at the top and bottom of the disk. A fiery, solar red glowed around the right edge of the moon, and at least two planets appeared on either side.
For 90 seconds, the horizon was navy blue with yellow highlights. The zenith of the sky was grayish navy blue while the narrowest spatial shadows hovered above us. A small crowd of taxi drivers and train passengers gathered around us in silence, as a sign of respect.
Then came the flash, the diamond ring, as sunlight streamed toward our planet through a deep valley in the receding edge of the moon. As I put my safety glasses back on, I saw the sun's glow moving slowly around the moon again.
Related: The 5 stages of the 2024 total solar eclipse explained for April 8
And then the whole thing was realized, but this strange red glow remained in my mind during the train ride home. Coldplay's lyrics, deepened by my recent studies of classics and history at the University of Leicester, were running through my head. I thought about the privilege of seeing the eclipse and whether I deserved it:
I read old books
Legends and myths
The wills they told
The moon and its eclipse
And Superman unfolds
A suit before he gets up
But I'm not the type of person that fits…
I also couldn't help but look at the setting sun a little differently. I saw a completely different side of the sun that is not usually visible. The eclipse seemed alien, but it has been occurring periodically on Earth for ages. What other secrets of the sky had I not considered in my 30 years of enjoying space, I wondered, and what would be shown to us next?
When the next solar eclipse occurs, our guide on how to observe the sun safely The guide explains what you need to know to watch the sun. We also have a guide for solar eclipse glassesand how to do it safely photograph the sun if you want to practice before the big day.
