A splendid spring day. A grandiose natural spectacle that only comes to your home once a century. A rare opportunity to break the routine of a Monday to live an experience that we will still talk about decades from now.
“Do you remember the eclipse of 2024? »
Of course we will remember it.
The Sun transformed into an orange Pac-Man, then into a thinner and thinner crescent as the Moon does what it almost never does – steals the show from the Sun in broad daylight, on its own territory. Eclipse it, literally.
The light that changes, the cold that sets in. Then darkness falls, the streetlights come on, the geese fall silent. And this hallucinatory vision of the Sun becoming a brilliant circular ring pierced by a large black circle.
What is striking is how multisensory the experience is.
I am one of those who was counting the days until the eclipse. By 12:30 p.m., we were installed at Parc des Voiles, in Saint-Mathias-sur-Richelieu, with our blankets and our camping chairs. Our coyote plan: take advantage of the clear view to the southwest, provided by the Chambly basin, to see the wall of shadow coming (which we ultimately didn’t really see coming, caught up in the excitement of watching several things at once).
The children, the blonde, the grandparents: three generations together, wearing cardboard-framed glasses that make us look like comic book characters.
From the morning, we felt the frenzy of the eclipse. On the radio, that was all we talked about. Montrealers who left the island towards Estrie or Montérégie to approach the heart of the band of the total eclipse formed traffic jams.
So it’s quite beautiful trip collective that southern Quebec experienced on Monday. The big problem: in this happening, we left many children behind.
I think of those whose parents were unable to take leave. Those who didn’t have anyone to take them to the right place and make sure they put their glasses on at the right time.
Those whose schools said: sorry, friends, we’re closing our doors because we’re too cowardly to help you enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime event. Get it sorted.
The only ones who managed to do worse were the infamous officials of the Marie-Victorin school service center in Longueuil, who asked that classroom curtains be closed and that students’ desks be placed with their backs to the Sun during school. eclipse. Pure security madness.
Children who live in the band of the eclipse therefore spent Monday afternoon at home – several of whom, we suspect, in front of screens. It hurts to write. Others will have experienced this historic moment in the basement or gymnasium of their school, under the supervision of daycare employees.
It is by experiencing the eclipse that we realize to what extent the school service centers which chose to close schools or keep children indoors made a pitiful “risk versus benefit” analysis.
They only saw the risks of the solar eclipse – real risks, but small and easy to mitigate. Especially since many organizations, including the Association for the Teaching of Science and Technology in Quebec, had raised their hands a long time ago to say: we have the expertise, we will help you.
The profits were completely evacuated. However, they are adults. We had a unique opportunity to stimulate children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for a natural phenomenon, to confront them with scientific concepts through their senses and their emotions rather than through explanations taken from a school textbook.
I saw my own children exclaim, ask a thousand questions, share their impressions. You can bet that on Tuesday, in addition to Billie Eilish’s next album and the Canadian’s upcoming match, we’ll be talking about the eclipse in the playgrounds. It’s sad to think that some will have to admit they haven’t seen it – or pretend otherwise to save face.
However, outings were made, columns were written, the Minister of Education himself ended up sending the right messages. That doesn’t stop the slow-motion train wreck from continuing, with no one managing to completely turn things around.
We spoke on Monday of a rare “collective communion” in the face of an exceptional phenomenon, enhanced by radiant weather which left plenty of room for spectacle.
We could have arranged for it to be everyone’s eclipse.
What do you think ? Participate in the dialogue