Kingston welcoming visitors on eclipse eve (2024)

Downtown Kingston was humming with activity on the afternoon before the 2024 total solar eclipse — an event predicted to bring as many as half a million people to the region on Monday.

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Visitors and locals alike took advantage of the sunny skies and mild day, with municipal parking spots seeming to be near capacity and sidewalks busy with pedestrians.

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Erin Finucan, interim general manager at the Holiday Inn on Kingston’s downtown waterfront, said the hotel is fully sold out — an unusual situation for a Sunday night. While some are related to a pre-booked conference, many are solar eclipse chasers.

“There’s a sense of excitement,” she said, pointing out that some eclipse guests were arriving as early as 11 a.m. to check in.

“This morning it’s different. Just the energy. Outside as well, too. I just walked downtown and Confederation Basin is just full of people. It’s a lovely day and everybody’s walking round.”

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Outside the Tourism Kingston centre, visitors were taking photos in front of the Kingston sign and enjoying fire pits and Adirondack chairs.

Chris and Kerry Ann Clapper were among them. The couple drove their three daughters seven hours from Altoona, Pa., to witness the once-in-a-lifetime event. They rented a house on Howe Island and plan to join Gananoque’s main eclipse event.

Kerry Ann’s family witnessed the 2017 solar eclipse in Tennessee, but at the time the Clapper family’s children were too young to be part of the event.

“My father cried,” Kerry Ann said. “He said it’s just something you’ve never experienced before. So we had to.”

Chris has heard that experiencing a total solar eclipse can be “awe-inspiring,” and he is eager to observe the family dog’s behaviour as the moon darkens the sun, and to potentially feel the temperature drop during those moments.

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He owns a telescope that he uses with his daughters to observe the night sky, including lunar eclipses.

“The reason why we came up here was because of me. I’m into this stuff,” he admitted. “Now we can’t use the telescope for a solar eclipse, but this is still one of those things that never in my lifetime we’ll be able to see again.”

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Witnessing a total solar eclipse is a “bucket-list item” for Chris Lavergne, who booked his Kingston stay in January and travelled from Ottawa. He was in downtown Kingston on Sunday afternoon.

“I’m into a lot of cosmological events,” he said. “The last one I can remember was Comet ISON, and we actually got to see that pretty close to home.

“I saw the last eclipse, which was about 30 per cent. But we figured we’d take the day off and make a trip out of it.”

He’s anticipating removing his glasses during totality, a rare and special opportunity that doesn’t come around very often.

“It’s really high up there, in terms of being able to look at the sun without any glasses. It was something I wanted to go to, so we booked everything early.”

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Virginia Pahlke spent hours watching for hotel room cancellations so that she and her husband Frank, from Keswick, Ont., could meet their daughters, studying at Trent University, in Kingston to watch the eclipse together.

“It wasn’t easy,” Pahlke said. “I had to keep going online to see if someone had cancelled.”

While they’re in town, they said they will be seeing a play and eating out, and they’re currently scouting out locations to watch the eclipse — likely along Kingston’s waterfront.

Finucan feels the event is going to have a very positive effect on the region.

“We’re anticipating increased use of our outlets for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and you know, when you’re in town and you’re on vacation, of course, you spend money shopping,” she said.

“Tourism Kingston has done an outstanding job promoting and capturing the attention of travellers to come to Kingston because we’re in the path of totality, and that’s been ongoing now for six to eight months. I’m really proud of what they’ve done on the ‘Visit Kingston’ side.”

mbalogh@postmedia.com

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