April 2024 Newsletter

CURRENTS is the official newsletter of the Credit River PROBUS Club. It is published monthly and emailed to members to keep them abreast of club activities and to promote the club’s central objectives. Submissions are welcome as are new ideas and should be emailed to Lydia Koop, lydia4@cogeco.ca.

President’s Message

In PROBUS jargon, an “event” is a “one off” happening such as a museum visit, as opposed to an “activity”, which is a recurrent happening, such as the Ramblers. By now, there can be no-one who does not know that a celestial “event”, a solar eclipse, is happening in Southern Ontario on the afternoon of April 8. Even Canada Post has got in on the act with a special stamp! There will not be another total solar eclipse visible in our general area until August of 2044, so April 8 would definitely qualify in PROBUS lingo as an “event” – a one off for most of us, unless you are willing to travel.

The total phase of the eclipse will just skirt Mississauga and Oakville and will last only a few seconds in Burlington. But in the Niagara peninsula, the total phase of the eclipse will last just over three minutes. Niagara Falls is gearing up for a million visitors: eclipse watchers are booking parking spots ahead of time, and there are forecasts of highways such as the QEW being totally jammed. Did you know there are eclipse watchers who schedule their lives around getting to the next one, whether it be by plane, boat or camel, wherever on our planet the eclipse may be observable?

I have learned that my husband is an eclipse chaser in a very modest way. We drove to Nashville for the eclipse of August 21, 2017. (At the very last minute, a small cloud appeared in the clear blue sky, and positioned itself in the worst possible place). So, we have experienced the traffic jams, as well as the odd lighting, and the weird sensation created by the moon’s shadow racing across the earth. A check with maps of this eclipse’s transit in April suggested one of the very best places in Ontario would be, not Niagara Falls, but Point Abino, a small promontory in Lake Erie near Crystal Beach. Somewhat annoyingly, although the point itself is public land, access to it is through a gated enclave, closed to the public except on rare summer Saturdays. Nevertheless, we did take a drive down to Lake Erie to check out a route for April 8 avoiding all major roads. It also provided an excuse for a very pleasant lunch in the canal side restaurant in Port Colborne to which John Burrows introduced us on one of his drives. (Thank you John.)

Eclipse timings can be predicted to a second, but weather predictions are much less certain. Whether we have better luck on the Lake Erie shore than we did in Tennessee is out of our hands – but if the rain comes down, I do have a book of those stamps…

And of course, whatever happens on April 8, Anne and Brian are planning interesting earth-bound PROBUS “events” which you can read about further on, in this issue of “Currents”.

Ada Dixon

You can find this month’s complete issue and past editions of CURRENTS here.

Read your copy of CURRENTS or see the web to find out more about  Activities,  Events,  and Travel in our club.

Direct comments about CURRENTS to Lydia Koop, lydia4@cogeco.ca. If you need to be sent another copy of CURRENTS please email crprobus@gmail.com.