Daylight Saving Time is a Dead Debate

All right, I’m sick of all of y'all beaking back and forth about Daylight Saving Time (DST) and how it should / shouldn’t be in Saskatchewan. Simply because the way it should be is already in effect. Although the time in our province is very unique, it’s a very simple concept and I will spell it out for you. But first you need to know a little about the history as it applies to us.

Contrary to popular belief, the modern day time zone does not follow Canada’s provincial borders. In fact Saskatchewan is bisected by the 105th West Meridian. Now I know some of you are saying “Meridians are cool and all, but what does that have to do with anything?” This in fact is where the whole problem lies. The 105th West meridian is actually the dividing line between the Mountain Standard Time Zone (MST) and the Central Standard Time Zone (CST). Starting to make sense? Half of Sask. is technically in the MST, with the other half sitting in the CST.

It gets deeper. Way back in 1890 the Government of Canada passed legislation to establish the time divisions for the country. In this legislation it stated that “the territories of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia shall use the 105th meridian time, 7 hours slower than Greenwich.” Which is MST. The Province of Saskatchewan passed their own legislation in 1909 declaring the time to be used in the province as MST. That’s easy enough, we are on MST. Oh, but that is not the case. That very legislation was reinterpreted in 1920, 1930, 1940, and then repealed in 1959.

All this chaos was caused by The Cities Act and The Towns Act. These acts allowed communities to establish their own observed time with a simple vote. This resulted in CST and MST to become inconsistently observed across the province. Say what? People couldn’t make up their minds? That sounds familiar. This led to a province wide vote on October 31, 1956. Showing that urban voters preferred CST, and rural voters preferred MST. With both groups split on DST. Okay… so now what? Well, 2 years later in 1958 the government tried to compromise. They passed legislation that switched the province to CST for the summer, and flipping to MST in October for the winter. Many of the communities in the southeast refused to switch their clocks in the winter, and the government failed to enforce the legislation. So that went nowhere.

1962 rolled in and a Time Committee was formed. The committee consisted of members of Saskatchewan School Trustees Association (SSTA), the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) and the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA). They researched and consulted their hearts out, and in 1965 submitted recommendations to Cabinet that helped form the basics of the new legislation to be implemented. A thorough scientific study was also submitted to the current premier the following year. It was conducted by the province’s sole professional astronomer at the time, Earl R. V. Milton the Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Saskatchewan Regina Campus. Professor Milton concluded that Saskatchewan should follow MST based on the location of the 105th meridian. His argument was supported by the comparison of clock error for different areas of the province. Clock error comes into affect the further you are located from a meridian. CST for the province resulted in 47 to 80 minutes of clock error, depending on your location. However MST only showed -13 to 20 minutes of clock error.

1966 was a big year, it was when the Saskatchewan legislature got it’s “act” together. They passed The Time Act, which wasn’t much more than a revision of the 1958 compromise. It put eastern, northeastern, and northwestern Sask onto CST year-round. In western Saskatchewan CST was to be used during the summer, and switches to MST during the winter. However it allowed for some time option areas, where they could still vote to change it for themselves. The northwestern time option area (i.e. Lloydminster area) could still vote to use another form of time. Whereas the western time option areas were able to vote between CST and MST for the winter. Now these time option areas are all spelt out in The Time Act, take a peep at section 9. Over time, however, the majority of the time option areas have voted to use CST year-round.

So the province is pretty much on CST by this point, but what the hell does this have to do with Daylight Saving Time? Well we all know that DST was implemented as a war-time measure to save electricity and fuel. It uses has continued since then, and has been adopted by most communities in Canada. We all know that when using DST the sunrise is one hour later, noon is one hour later, and sunset is one hour later. With Saskatchewan remaining on CST year-round and not changing our clocks in the winter, we actually enjoy the benefit of DST without having to do the work involved. Now I know for some of you that is quite the bombshell to drop, and is difficult to wrap your head around. Hear me out, by sticking with CST year-round we not only experience a uniform time across the province. We also share the same time as Manitoba during the winter (CST) and enjoy the same time as Alberta during the summer (Mountain Daylight Saving Time).

There you have it, Saskatchewan is already using DST during the summer without having to change our clocks. This is caused by the way The Time Act was implemented, considering the findings of Professor Milton (as well as our geographically location in respect to the 105th meridian) that we should be following the Mountain Standard Time zone. What that means is that during the summer time we are following the proper time, but in the winter we are not. In the winter we do not switch our clocks back, therefore we are actually gaining an extra hour of sunlight in the winter as well.

As a province we have already been through this whole tedious time debate before, it actually took 57 years to get a uniform time across the province. To those of you who are still high on the idea of “switching to DST”, maybe check into the facts a little before you run your mouth. Specially since we are already using DST, or maybe it would just be easier to say this: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!!

References:

• Daylight saving time - Wikipedia
• Dayling saving time around the world - Wikipedia
• Saskatchewan Government Relations - The Time System (pdf)

Images:

• Time Zones & Daylight Saving Time - National Research Council of Canada
• Images used under permission from the National Research Council of Canada

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