by Victor Abraham
During the month of March the Hamilton Centre participated in Westfield Heritage Village‘s Maple Syrup Run. You may wonder what maple syrup and astronomy have to do with one another. The answer is that Westfield is a park where visitors can experience pioneer life as it was in the 1800’s. Westfield also houses a number of historic, period specific telescopes, having belonged to one of our organization’s founding members, Rev. D.B. Marsh.
These events were held on each of the Sundays in March as well as two days during the March break. A number of our members enthusiastically braved cold temperatures, and occasionally, less than favourable weather conditions, to bring over 10,000 visitors, views of the sun and moon. We used the event to showcase our outreach activities and to bring awareness around the solar eclipse in 2024. Our volunteers handed out our newly designed pamphlets and have been getting increased interest in our Centre activities. We also made use of a number of RASC publications, such as solar observation booklets, planetary fact cards, previous editions of the Observers Handbook, and old SkyNews magazines. The fact cards were especially a hit with kids.
A big thank-you to our members – without whom this event could not have been possible: Jeff Parsons, Al Murphy, Bruce Cornelius, Andy Blanchard, Erin Vassair, Jenn Downey-Truax, Parvez Khatib, Ed Mizzi & Victor Abraham.
