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# Canadian Eclipse
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/canadian-eclipse/
- Published: 2026-08-12T13:17:49.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:06:04.000Z
- Description: “Canadian Eclipse,” a split screen day trip across countries, written Wednesday, August 12, 2026 poem 224 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Campobello Sitting Room," by Diana Ludwick © 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Poems, August, Books, Border Crossing, Campabello Island, Canada, Eleanor, FDR, Fish Chowder, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, High Summer, NB, New Brunswick, Pie, Polio, Prince Cottage, Roosevelt, Roosevelt Red, Sara, Summer, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

We are on Campobello Island   
on a Wednesday.  
Grandma, Mom, Granddaughter,   
three fiercely independent beings   
who managed a multi-hour car trip   
over the border,   
leaving the Easternmost point   
of the United States   
to trek into the Canadian beyond.  
The earth opens and unfurls   
into craggy, rocky shorelines.  
Greener pines, i've never seen.  
Endless blue skies soar overhead   
with faint puffs of white clouds.  
  
We order three bowls   
of famous Roosevelt fish chowder   
which we lap up   
on the painted white porch of Prince Cafe   
while watching the ferry   
cross a pick-up over to Deer Island.  
  
We are here to see   
the generational Roosevelt Cottage  
where one of our most famous presidents grew up,   
raised his own family each summer  
and left his hat and cigar and paper.   
The park is our world's only example   
of a co-run by two countries, per our tour guide:  
"in peace and effective partnership.  
"And that's *all* I'll say."   
  
We take an intermission in the parking lot  
at 2:50 p.m. Atlantic Time  
to peer indirectly at the sky   
using the shadows of shifting leaves on my car bonnet   
to catch glimpses of forty-four percent totality,   
2026's biggest solar eclipse.  
  
We are the only gawkers.  
We do not care   
that the handful of visitors   
out on the international park lawn   
take in our little trio as if we are the spectacle,   
and not our moon crossing in front of our sun,   
plunging us into a strange shadow, darker, bluer,   
which to be fair is almost imperceptible   
if not attuned to what to look for.  
  
We peer into the primary bedroom   
where Franklin Delano Roosevelt   
took his final steps at age thirty-nine,   
three and a half years younger than me,   
my kid cheerfully points out.  
We learn that the wallpaper   
is a faithful reprint to replace the original,  
"Because generations of smoking...doesn't do wonders to wall print."  
  
We gaze out of broad bay windows   
providing clean sight lines to the beach and beyond.  
We spy a four-foot-tall parchment megaphone;  
the same one Eleanor used to call  
the children on the water in for dinner at night.  
  
As I take in the library, the Victrola,   
the pie stand in the kitchen,   
the teddy bear in the nursery,   
it dawns on me, this is the cottage of a happy family.  
  
Unlike the mausoleum chill of the Breakers in Newport,  
this Roosevelt red and green shingled cottage  
is full of life, decades removed from its last occupants.   
  
Walking the halls, craning my neck   
into bedrooms and larders and school rooms,   
the home fills me with calm, cheer, peace.  
  
I note with relief that the primary bedroom   
is not substantially bigger   
than the staff quarters,   
on the same floor; same perfect views.  
  
I feel welcomed and embraced by hospitality.  
as the breeze flows through   
bringing oxygenated sea air to my lungs,   
I can feel in my veins why Campobello   
was such a magical place for the Roosevelts —  
and why it must have been such a tragedy   
for FDR to only return three times after contracting Polio   
("from the Boy Scouts," our guide surmised)   
due to there being no phone lines to the island   
during his highly plugged-in presidential years.  
  
We begrudgingly exit,   
but before we turn Southbound,   
we make a stop at the most   
jigsaw puzzle-looking lighthouse   
I've ever seen.  
It's closed due to the rising tide;  
we've just missed our window   
to descend rusty ladders into the depths  
to then cross the channel by foot  
and scale another orange-brown ladder   
on the other side   
to tour the lighthouse itself.  
I am secretly grateful that   
the decision To Cross or Not to Cross   
has been made for me.  
My mother, however,  
regrets being denied this adventure.  
  
After some candid snaps,   
it's time to climb back into the car,   
trudge South to the border,  
show our papers,   
give our stories,  
make our way further down down   
down the coast into Yarmouth.