Alberta’s move to permanent Daylight Saving Time last weekend meant no more extra hour of sleep, and in doing so, became part of a nationwide debate about the health and social benefits of a time change to begin with. But it’s not the first time Canadians, or North Americans for that matter, have challenged the conventions of time. In fact, both Canada and the United States have messed around with time changes (and time zones) to varying degrees of success; if history doesn’t tell us how Albertans may feel about permanent DST by the winter solstice, time will. The origins of Daylight Saving (not Savings) Time Turning back the clocks as a concept, according to British Columbia’s University Canada West, dates back more than a century: we fall back one hour in November, we spring forward an hour in March. The idea was first proposed on the brink of the 20th century as a way to give New Zealanders extra hours of sunshine in the summer. That credit goes to George Hudson – although they shot him down. Nobody would touch the idea again until 1915, about two decades later. The German government was brainstorming energy conservation tricks during the First World War: less artificial light in your homes, more energy for war. Chad Orzel, a physics and astronomy professor at Union College in New York, says the idea doesn’t hold up as well now that we’ve studied it more. “It was pitched as an energy conservation measure initially … If you pushed the sunset back a bit, then you didn’t need to burn as much fuel to generate light,” he said. “That argument probably shouldn’t carry the same kind of weight because the more energy intensive thing these days is air conditioning. We’re doing modern lights, LEDs, things that consume vastly less electricity.” Daylight Saving Time was introduced formally in Canada in 1918 with the same conservation idea, and as a way to increase wartime production as a whole. The concept was: Sun’s up earlier, worker gets up early, worker works more. The federal government scrapped DST after the First World War, but started it again during the Second World War. Municipalities in Canada would eventually regulate daylight saving on their own to reduce confusion, as different businesses started using different times after the Second World War. In 1966, Saskatchewan became the first province to switch to permanent Central Standard Time – scrapping daylight time changes altogether. Recent legislation ensured the entire province was on the same page. In 1987, official time zones and DST became legally regulated by provincial, territorial and municipal governments in Canada. Canada has historically followed the lead of the U.S. when it comes to when exactly a time change occurs – in 2006, the U.S. legislated new months for the changes. Canada followed suit. Now, however, multiple provinces and territories have made the decision to move to either permanent standard or daylight time. Saskatchewan moved to standard time. Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Yukon and the Northwest Territories moved to daylight. Read more: Clocks from coast to coast to coast: A breakdown of time change rules across Canada Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made the move earlier this year – despite a 2021 referendum that narrowly rejected permanent DST – to give residents an extra hour of sunlight in the winter months. “I kind of like more sunlight at night, and I think most people do, too, because we are on daylight eight months out of the year,” she told reporters in March. She asked the public to give it a year and, if Albertans don’t like it, the government could put it to a vote in 2027. Time changes as social convention In 1973, then-U.S. President Richard Nixon made a similar choice that would backfire almost immediately. Americans tried less sunlight in the morning for about 10 months, partially in winter, before they would largely agree that time changes should resume. It was the first time a North American government had regulated time on a grand scale since active war, Orzel says. Turns out, when people have been regulating their own time for a couple decades, a permanent DST wasn’t well-received. Daylight time in the winter meant the sun wouldn’t rise until late in the morning. Eight students in Florida died in traffic accidents in the weeks following the change as they walked to school in complete darkness. Some schools even began delaying classes to adjust for the lack of light. Despite resounding approval at the beginning, Orzel said by the time the legislation was repealed in 1974, it had become “toxically unpopular.” As for how Canadians would like it: “It would not really surprise me if that were to happen again … There’s been (debate) the whole time that this has existed.” To that point, Orzel says the entire point of time changes now is social convention. “The reason (time changes) stick around is that you have the benefit by springing forward in March, we make the sunset in the summer artificially an hour later than it would be, and that’s really pleasant,” he said. “That turns out to be enormously popular.” To this day, the U.S. mostly prohibits moves to abolish time changes unless it’s in Alaska or Hawaii’s case. Both of those states operate on permanent standard time, and like Saskatchewan, do not fall back one hour in November. The Sunshine Protection Act, which has been sitting in U.S. Congress since 2018 but has made some recent progress, has been petitioning for permanent DST, or at least the right to switch to permanent DST should a state so choose. But Orzel says he doesn’t expect real permanent changes to happen at federal levels. “The process of actually making the change requires a fairly sustained effort, and really the clock changes are more of a passing annoyance,” he said. “It happens, everybody’s upset about it for a couple of days … It doesn’t really stay a priority long enough for most people to think that it’s a thing for expending effort on.” And whether time changes, or zones for that matter, actually make a difference, Orzel says, is all relative. A philosophical essay by Henri Poincaré points out that anyone trying to establish time across distance must establish a convention for how time should operate, despite the sun not hitting peak at the same time across North America. “And any of those conventions is going to involve making some assumptions about how the universe operates … We’re choosing a form of the laws of physics that is convenient to us, and that constrains our choices for what we can say about the timing of events in different places,” Orzel explained. On the whole, Orzel notes that time changes are often top of mind for about a week before people adjust to their regular lives. After all, humans are adaptable, meaning this article may be obsolete at this point. “I do think it’s kind of fun that the issue keeps bubbling around. I hope it’s never really permanently settled one way or the other, because a couple times a year, people call me up and want to ask questions,” he joked. “I get to have fun conversations about the history of timekeeping.”
