Eclipsing the Eclipse – Toronto Trip Overview – 11/14/24

A few months ago, I noticed that there was a total solar eclipse that was supposed to happen on April 8th, 2024, passing over North America. On further inspection, I happened to find that the path of totality (the area over which one can see the moon totally covering the sun during the eclipse) was passing directly over Niagara Falls. I’d never been to Niagara Falls, nor had I really traveled much on the continent I grew up on. Without knowing all the details, I went ahead and committed to taking that trip, and started asking around to see if people would like to join.

Most of my friends and coworkers ended up not saying anything, but the same person who went to Ireland with me decided to tag along. After a bit of discussion, we decided to stay in Toronto rather than down at the falls. The flight and hotel were booked a solid month and a half or more before the trip, but we didn’t decide on what to do besides the Falls and the eclipse until the week before the trip; I usually leave a lot of slack and just find some options to decide on once we get there when planning a trip.

And so, last Saturday we headed out to Dulles International Airport. For those who don’t know, the roads surrounding Dulles are:

1. A toll road. The toll isn’t much, but it is annoying given how infrequently I fly out of Dulles. I generally try to avoid it.
2. Down Interstate 495, a road that circumnavigates Washington, D.C. and is notorious for being perpetually backed up with traffic, particularly in the area around northern Virginia, which also happens to be where the airport is.
3. Massive, sprawling suburbia, littered with wide roads and stop lights/signs everywhere.

Heading mostly down 495 ended up being a mistake; despite leaving 3 hours before our flight and the trip to the airport itself only taking an hour and change usually, traffic on 495 nearly made us miss the flight entirely. After cramming what would’ve been our checked bags into the overhead bins (I absolutely hate doing this, please don’t bring oversize luggage into the cabin if you can help it), the rest of that day’s travel was thankfully uneventful. Side-note, I realized the Rush song YYZ was about the Toronto International Airport during the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel.

We stayed at a hotel in Old Toronto, the downtown center effectively. I was determined to drive as little as possible in Toronto, given how much I despise city driving in general, and although the price tag for the hotel was heavier, the convenience of just being able to go outside and walk places was very much appreciated. Not to mention, getting a view of the city from within that wasn’t just looking up at skyscrapers was very nice.

For a Saturday night, the city was a bit quieter than I expected, although we did go in early April, which to my knowledge isn’t really peak tourist season. We found a Banh Mi place and I made my friend try it for the first time; he seemed to like it. (For the record, if you’re ever around Washington, D.C. or Alexandria, I highly recommend trying Vietnamese food there. There’s a number of extremely good Pho and Banh Mi shops in the area.) By the time we finished eating it was nearly 10:00, and we retired to our room for the night.

The next day, I’d scheduled for us to meet a friend of mine around 1:00pm. Before then, we took a little look around downtown proper, now that we had daylight to help. Queen’s Park was the first stop, after breakfast and a little meandering, followed by the Gardinier Museum, which was full of pottery from all over the world. We met up with my friend; a member of Toronto’s huge film photography community, shooting on his Sears Ultron camera as he showed us around town and down to Little Portugal, where he gets his film developed. I also got to meet a very sweet, chill dalmatian named Sundae while I was there. Meeting dogs makes any experience better.

My friend’s photography can be found here; he primarily deals with film and recently old digital cameras, and has a phenomenal sense of composition. He got some photos from around Toronto during the eclipse if you’d like to see what it was like, as well. If you’re in the Toronto area, I highly recommend joining his photography group or going to check out their exhibits. Go check out his stuff!

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After finding a little oat/nut milk smoothie bar, we wandered back towards the hotel and found our way into Graffiti Alley. It’s the first time I’ve seen a full area, even just the back of a few buildings, dedicated to street art this way, although there were a couple of other interesting pieces on the sides of buildings around town. Graffiti and such in Baltimore is generally limited to text and signs of some kind or another, so it was refreshing to see people making gorgeous art on such a large scale in public places.

As a side note, here’s the closest thing I may ever get to taking a self-portrait.

We returned to the hotel roof for a bit to watch the first half or so of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a stageplay from the 60’s, adapted for film viewing in the 90’s by the original writer and director, Tom Stoppard. The whole film is full of the typical British dry humor from that time period; something you really have to pay attention to to fully appreciate. Dinner was a pizza at an upscale sports bar, with a waiter who was a bit too much into alternative medicine and the supernatural and out there about it for my tastes. I finished the night by watching Perfect Days, a wonderful Japanese film that was released last year. Without writing a whole movie review here, it was surprisingly easy for me to relate with a 60-year-old Japanese toilet cleaner. Despite the movie not having a clear plot and mostly being comprised of a man living his life and the little oddities that happen along the way, I was still fully interested through the whole thing.

Then again, maybe I’m just a bit weird.

Monday was the day of the eclipse. Driving the rental car down to Niagara Falls wasn’t as stressful as I figured it would be, though the QEW was far more packed than I thought it would be. The news was calling for a million people down at the falls; they were supposedly sending police to help direct traffic and keep things orderly. I was picturing Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom during Christmastime.

When I got down there, what I saw was the equivalent of the local theme park during peak season. Everybody was friendly, there was plenty of space, and the whole experience was rather nice, aside from the slight chill in the air from being so close to the falls. Everybody was just parked on the grass, looking up at the sky, waiting with baited breath.

Of course, the completely overcast sky made a bit more drama out of the situation than was entirely necessary. The rare break in the clouds, particularly as totality approached, caused a huge uproar from people hundreds of feet away. Meanwhile, you just had to sit there and be happy for them, and pray for your turn.

Seconds felt like minutes while I was staring through my camera’s viewfinder, hoping to capture a moment of totality through the clouds. One lucky group got a full hole in the clouds to see the totality through.

Three minutes was what we had in totality. I wasn’t sure if I was going to see what I wanted in that time frame.

But I got it.

It’s hard to describe the tension and excitement that was there with any sort of clarity; it really is a unique feeling to be completely surrounded by strangers, hoping and joyously celebrating the same thing as you. People were cheering and looking around and just taking in the moment, and that’s something I couldn’t have hoped to capture.

I even managed to make an acquaintance, despite my terrible habit of not initiating conversation with strangers. He was an astronomy enthusiast who asked for the pictures of the eclipse after the fact, and we sat for a while and talked about the next eclipse and ones they’ve been to in the past while I let my camera take pictures on its own for 15 minutes. Not a one of them came out looking good to my eye, but such is photography sometimes.

Of course, as soon as the eclipse ended, the skies started to clear up. The end of the day was perfect and sunny, and a phenomenal time to see Niagara Falls. We’d planned to go under the falls and see the old power station, and take our time wandering around the place. I took a shot at some photos with people as subjects, a rarity for me, and handed the camera off to my friend as we wandered down the old tunnels underneath the decommissioned power station.

After meeting an adorable Bernese Mountain Dog named Cooper, though, I felt my idea of skipping lunch catching up with me, and we headed across town to get food rather than wait in line to go under the falls. I have a friend who lived in Niagara for a year or so, and she recommended a place; we ended up going to Johnny Rocko’s, a little Italian place and bar, which was decidedly not where she recommended. We got to listen to some acoustic covers of old rock and pop songs and take a couple hours to relax and recover from the day, before heading back up to Toronto and returning the rental to a decidedly full rental lot, and a decidedly annoyed woman who was very disappointed by her view of the eclipse.

Tuesday, I woke up with sore feet and legs; I’m not used to walking this much, and my knock-kneed legs have a tendency to give me trouble after a few days of heavy walking. I let my friend sleep in, as he’s normally not up until noon at the earliest if he can help it, and after breakfast we headed off to Toronto Island after a wander around the park outside the gate. We arrived outside of the usual tourist season, so we didn’t have trouble with crowds in the slightest, and the island was rather quiet. I was a bit surprised to learn people do, in fact, live on the island, and saw plenty of wonderful looking houses. We didn’t have all the time we would’ve liked to explore, though, and so only got to see a small part of it.

That wasn’t helped in the least when my friend got to talking to one of the locals, a wonderful woman named Tanya. She’s a local artist, and hosts art workshops for children during the summer. We talked to her and got to know her cat Osheen and her dog Seamus (apologies if I’ve misspelled these, Irish Gaelic and old Irish names are not my strong suit). After a twenty minute talk or so, we parted ways, only to meet up again on the wilderness trails around the island. She took us to a faerie circle off the beaten path. Another half hour or so later, we finally parted ways again. If you get a moment to check out her art, I highly recommend it. Her instagram.

Some more wandering around the island provided some much needed quiet after the hectic nature of the last few days; Toronto is a lovely city, but being perpetually stuck downtown can get to you sometimes, especially if you’re like me and live out in the middle of nowhere generally. Before we left, I handed the camera to my friend to let him take some photos. He’s a very capable artist, though he doesn’t share any of his work online.

And… well, that’s about all the photos I have to share. After we left the island we had to rush off; my friend had bought us tickets to see a professional performance of Les Miserables, and we got some gelato after the show to round out the trip. Off to the airport in the morning, and one of the least exciting travel days I’ve ever had after that, including yet more sitting and waiting in traffic.

So, what’d I learn? What did I get out of this trip aside from some photos? I suppose I learned Toronto’s a pretty cool city; I don’t know if I’d want to live there myself, but I’d definitely like to visit again, maybe on my own next time so I can plan on wandering around some more. It feels like a city where there’s always something interesting going on if you keep your eyes open.

My friend Sam’s film photography group, Toronto Analog Friends, hosts a monthly photo competition with a theme. This month’s theme was “connection,” which is such a wide-open idea that I think it’d be hard to fully define. It makes it a good topic for art, something that’s very much open to interpretation. It could be the connections between people, the connection between people and nature, the connection between your body and your mind; the more I think about it, this trip really was about connecting with people, at least for me. Going to see someone I’ve known via the internet for a while, making someone’s brief acquaintance at a massive event before going our own way, perfectly satisfied with the interaction as it is, traveling with someone I’ve known for the majority of my life, or meeting someone new who may be a friend for a while yet; this trip had all of these, not to mention getting to see something as powerful and gorgeous as nature at work at Niagara Falls, and remembering just how much I love nature and traveling and getting to just see new things. It’s a good way to get out of the winter blues and get motivation to start going out and photographing again.

P.S. – I just had a trip to the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. yesterday (April 13th). I brought a friend, planned to meet another there, and ended up meeting yet another friend and a couple I haven’t seen in nearly 3 years at this point. Somehow, a lot of them also knew each other. Once again, that feeling of connection is being brought back up. Very happy with everything that’s happened recently, and looking forward to getting into photography more again.