This was my first time experiencing a total eclipse, and it did not disappoint! But the day did not go as planned.
A friend amateur astronomer invited me to his cottage in Sutton, Quebec, to be able to view the eclipse in a location that was ideal, located just a few kilometers from the center of the path of totality. At that spot, the eclipse would last nearly 3 minutes and 30 seconds. The forecast was for perfect blue skies, in fact eastern Quebec appeared to be the best spot in all of North America to watch the eclipse without cloud cover.
That morning I planned my trip, packed up the car with my telescope, camera, laptop table, chair, and was looking forward to the day. According to Google Maps, I would get to Sutton with 1hr to spare, enough time to setup the equipment.
However once on the road the traffic situation changed rapidly as thousands of people were heading out to the eastern townships searching the ideal place to view the eclipse. Montreal being an island, the crossing points are limited and this resulted in terrible gridlock traffic as everyone appeared to hit the road at the same time. Two hours later, when I should have been approaching Sutton, I was still on the island of Montreal trying to make it across a bridge.
There I was sitting in a traffic jam, Google Maps kept increasing the ETA as I was barely moving a car length per minute and I was loosing all my equipment setup time. On top of that, I was starting to wonder if I even had enough gas in the car to make it. Creeping along in stop-n-go traffic was killing the fuel economy. I was starting to wonder if I should think of a plan B.
With a lot of patience I reached Brossard on the south short and was now on highway 10 to the eastern townships, free from the city of Montreal. But the highway was behaving closer to a shopping center parking lot on December 23rd. The worse scenario was starting to materialize: stuck on a highway with my telescope and gear in the trunk and no place to setup. Would the shoulder of a highway be my destination?
I was now next to an offramp and the next exit was over 10 kilometers away, likely a 1 hour ordeal. I decided to get off the highway, abandon the Sutton destination and go for plan B: find a suitable spot to setup. The eclipse would begin in 1 hour, I needed to find a spot quickly.
That arrived moments later as I spotted from the highway a commercial zone with a vacant lot away from buildings. It would have to do, my nerves were about to fray. There was amble space to safely setup my gear with no disruptions and more importantly, time to do so before the eclipse would start.
I’m sure there were people driving by wondering what I doing there, but it didn’t matter as I was ready to observe and photograph the eclipse. Two visible sun spots on the sun were much welcomed focusing aids. But not being correctly polar aligned meant the sun would drift away every 5-10 minutes. Nothing would be perfect in these circumstances and that was OK.
I had photographed partial eclipses in the past, so seeing the Moon creep in front of the sun was interesting but not spectacular. That all changed when the eclipse became total and I was able to remove the solar filter from the telescope and really appreciate the show.
The total eclipse was surreal and freaky, I now understood why many people chase the next eclipse. I may not have made it to my friend’s cottage in Sutton and experience this with a bunch of other people. Instead I was able to give 100% of my focus to my equipment to capture the beauty of a total eclipse.
If you have a fun and interesting story around your experience of the eclipse, please do comment below.
Ben Backyard Astronomy 
Great images! Can’t believe you found a spot like that at the last minute!
Regards,
Dave
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didn’t even think it was going to be such a big deal to be honnest. I had in mind that it would be “interesting” at best. Boy was i wrong!
sorry to all those who wanted to be in the path of totality and couldn’t. It was incredible, especially at this time of year with the weather we got. Early April comes with ALOT of uncertainty regarding weather in Quebec. It can be warm, it can be cold, you can even get a snow storm, sunshine, and anything else in between. In Magog, the lake Memphré was surrounded by thousands of locals and people from all over. Many people crossed from the east-coast of the US for the day.
it was indeed a nightmare on our small and, politics-aside, shitty highway and road network. I’m grateful i could take the day off, even though I hadn’t planned the traffic to be that crazy, because i got to my viewing destination super casually. Sorry Ben, i’d say “do that next time” but next time will likely be an eclipse you have to chase, which means you will hopefully be on a day off!
anyways, what I came here to say is how I could NOT have been more wrong about this natural phenomenon. To be fair, the partial eclipse, without any special gear other than approved cheap glasses, is what I thought it would be. Not much. But then…
Holy #!@%.
I giggled like a kid, i teared up, I…. i still don’t know how to explain how i felt. So many different things all at once. From the accelerated sunset, to the peaceful darkness, the ability to see, with the naked eye,giant solar flares on the surface of the sun, the chilly April ightime temperature come and minutes later be replaced again by a rapid sunrise and the warm feeling of radiating heat on your skin… i really so far off when thinking about what this event would represent.
To anyone who ever wondered IF they should go an hour or even 3 or 4 out of their way to watch a total solar eclipse in the future, the answer is yes. Even if you, like me, are not into astronomy, don’t have any equipment, and haven’t geeked-out on that subject before, go. Just go.
we layed down on the ground, put a sweater under heads during partial stages (which we ended up beeding to cover ourselves during 3.5mins of totality) and marveled. No expensive buy-in.
great photos Ben, glad you manged to get in the path in time and hope you share photos of more eclipses in the future!
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you’re absolutely right. i saw it in vermont and i was floored. had no idea it was gonna be that cool.
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David, thanks for your wonderful account of how you lived it. Quebec really got lucky with the weather. Just 4 days before the eclipse, Montreal and the Eastern township got a record breaking 30cm of snow! This blue sky and warm 15deg weather really came out of nowhere.
As for the traffic, never would I have believed so many people wanting to be in the best spot to watch the eclipse. I thought only astronomy geeks like me would be willing to drive hours out of town to get to the ideal spot. Boy was I wrong.
100% agree with you regarding the sense of amazement and confusion as your brain is trying to process all the information. I knew there are eclipse chasers out there and they book years in advance a hotel, campground, flight and even a cruise just to be able to catch the eclipse. When totality hit, I understood why.
Cheers!
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Wow, Ben, incroyable tes photos!
Je n’ai malheureusement pas pu assister au spectacle, donc merci pour tes photos, ça compense un peu!!!
Prends soin de toi!
Chiss!
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J’avais pris congé pour être en mesure de me déplacer à un endroit plus favorable. Si t’es encore à Mirabel ce n’était pas idéal.
Content de lire que tu as apprécié mes photos.
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Toujours à Mirabel.. J’ai hésité entre aller en ville ou rester avec la famille à la maison… Et je peux confirmer à tout le monde que 99.6% d’obscurité c’est juste un coucher de soleil en accéléré, y a pas vraiment rien de spécial…
En d’autres mots, je confirme ceci: https://m.xkcd.com/2914/
À la prochaine!
Chiss!
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