St. John's Centre managed to conduct a quite successful International Astronomy Day on saturday. The weather was perfectly clear (if incredibly windy in the afternoon!) and seven volunteers from our Centre showed up with telescopes, brochures and a poster display at the Signal Hill National Historic Site of Canada (Parks Canada) above St. John's, at our planned start of about 3pm. We'd advertised the event in the radio media, and three local radio stations broadcast our announcement for a couple of days. I'd perhaps not very wisely specified that the event would be at the crest of Signal Hill, where in the past we've done e.g., the Venus Transit last year, but the wind quickly forced us down the Parks Canada visitor centre just below, which was opened for us with hot chocolate, coffee and munchies, where we could set up in the lee of the building there. The mercury might technically have read +6C or so, but the wind chill made it pretty cold (minus teens)!

The change of venue perhaps confused a few people, but we changed our signage and still had a healthy trickle come by that afternoon to look at sunspots (two solar filtered instruments, 3" and 8" aperture) and the first quarter moon high in the blue, cloudless sky (from the safety of the Visitor Centre's shadow). The building served as both a much-needed wind break, and as a sun screen to prevent accidental (or mis-guided) pointing of unfiltered instruments at the Sun. It turned out to be a very good arrangement.

In the evening it stayed perfectly clear, and we benefited by having some lighting (security, logistics) at the Visitor Centre, something the die- hard observing core were ambivalent about but which I'm sure kept parents at ease regarding their kids. We had considerably more people come by after supper, young families most typically, to look at Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and even a couple of deep sky objects (M3 and M42, BeeHive, Double Cluster). It was gratifying to hear five year-olds, hoisted up to eyepieces, exclaim "wow!" at Saturn, or be amazed that the light they were seeing was ~45,000 years old (M3). The wind abated and it actually warmed up as it got dark (!) - We continued until about 10pm, at which point we'd counted roughly 120 happy visitors, and one happy golden retriever. A huge thanks go to Parks Canada for helping us out.