- by Anne Finlay-Stewart

It may be the best two dollars I ever spent – that pair of "eclipse glasses" from a local camera store.

I had been invited to an eclipse party at King's College Circle, that huge lawn at University of Toronto surrounded by academic buildings and Convocation Hall. A warm cloudless day, sitting under the trees and stepping out to look at the progress of the moon across the face of the sun between bites of Roberta's watermelon gazpacho. Passing those $2 glasses to my son. So close to heaven in so many ways.

And one by one, so many curious people wander over to join the heavenly party.

Our hosts are scientists and they have brought both a low tech pinhole box - a camera obscura - and a higher tech apparatus that projects the bitten sun onto a white screen.

The former gets a surprising number of takers, given that it involves putting a cardboard carton over your whole head and having to be guided to aim it at the sun while you face in the opposite direction. (I am tempted to return during frosh week to see how many people I can get to put the box on their head to see the image of the full sun.)

Our friend Patrick had received the instructions for his eclipse projection device from Paul Doherty – a man he describes as "probably the best science communicator in the world" - who died just last week. Here in the park, the eclipse is projected on to a white board right below an inscription in Doherty's honour.

Someone, clearly a fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, arrives with a multi-coloured two-person cardboard viewer well decorated with quotes from the Douglas Adams classic. His helpful assistants are offering sparkly stick-on stars to any takers, while personally demonstrating their many decorative applications.

I have only the glasses which black out everything but the sun, and I am delighted to see the beginning of the eclipse with my own eyes. But there are gaps between my own peeks, and people are starting to gather around who don't have any glasses. The first person I invite to look through mine is a young man who is very eager to have a look. "I have never experienced anything like this in my country," he says excitedly before he has even put on the glasses. When he tells me he is from Chile  I am able to let him know that the next two total eclipses will be visible back home.

The grace and etiquette of this sharing process happens very naturally. Everyone waits to be invited to look, or politely asks "May I?" They wait their turn, put on the glasses and tilt their head back. And then their jaw drops. Every... single... one. "Oh!...wow!....amazing...I didn't...."

Whenever noone is waiting for their first look, I return to my friend from Chile, who is always ready to take another peek through the glasses. We both know he wants to. A man comes up and grins -  "Could I have another look? – I'm addicted now!"

People with cameras try to capture what they can see through the glasses, and then run up to show me their success. People ask science questions and I call out "Oh Scientists!" and someone is happy to oblige with the answers.

Little kids look - and tell their mothers what they see in languages I don't understand. Men who think they might be too cool for this look anyway, and then try to hide their reaction, but I see it.

When the glasses come off, every single person is smiling. And so am I. We have just had an experience like no other, and we grin at each other like we shared a secret. Without exception, they thank me for letting them, or encouraging them, or even cajoling them into looking through my $2 glasses.
Everyone is grateful and happy. None more than I. It feels as if everything unpleasant has been suspended, just for this hour.

Then one woman who had held the glasses over her headscarf as she looked at the sun asks if she can take a picture with me. "Because you have been so nice, and nice people are rare," she explains. "Even rarer than eclipses."
I want that not to be true for her, but she has brought me back down here to earth.

Thanks to Patrick Tevlin for the photo and to Roberta Tevlin for the invitation.