There are no shortage of places to experience the total solar eclipse a short drive from Tantramar, like in Shediac or further afield in Woodstock, Heartland, Fredericton and Miramichi. People can watch the near total eclipse from anywhere outside, viewings are being set up at the Mount Allison Gemini Observatory and the city of Moncton is celebrating at Bore Park with live music, a photo booth and free safety viewing glasses (which a required in order to look at the eclipse safely).
Leading up to the cosmic wonder, Sackville residents remember eclipses gone by.
Magali Charron experinced a partial eclipse while in New York City.
“I went to the park to watch it with some special glasses, and I realized that it was much cooler to look on the ground where the tree shadows were happening. And every leaf was in the shape of half a moon, which was super bizarre. And also the birds stopped singing all together. And then when the sun came back, they started singing, which was really moving.”
Jerry Ropson remembers a solar eclipse that happened in 1986, on the same day as his Great-Grandfather’s funeral. “It was the first time I’d ever witnessed or experienced that death. And I was really confused. I thought that when someone you love died, the sun went dark. And then I was telling all my cousins that the sun was going dark because we were burying our great grandfather.” Ropson learned, that was not the case.
June Claytor watched a partial solar eclipse in Sackville in 2017 with a simple pin hope projector. “We got piece of paper, like put a hole through it and then we got to see like the shadow move. It was cool.”
She, and many other students have protective viewing goggles given to them at school.
The province would like to remind people that traffic might be heavier in some areas, and as children are being released earlier from school drivers should exercise extra caution when they’re being released. And as the sky will temporarily be going dark much earlier than usual. Wildlife may act unusually.
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