Jordan: I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired. Part of that is the ceaseless thrum of end of the world news. Of course, part of it’s just work. Or family. Or the everyday things that always get to me by the end of the week. And this week in particular, there is another reason I’m tired. And you know it, or at least, most of you do. With the exception of most of Saskatchewan and Nunavut, you lucky jerks, Canada sprang forward this week, and as if this world didn’t seem bleak enough, now it is once again dark. When I leave my house in the morning. Every year more and more people ask why we have daylight saving time and the calls to abolish it grow louder, and now we may, in some places be ready to actually do away with it. Except, there’s a but. Of course there is. What happens if some places in Canada eliminate daylight saving time, but their neighbours, either to the South or to the side, do not? What if some places decide to stay on permanent daylight time and others decide the opposite? What if every province and territory makes their own call and we end up with a maze of time-zones that plays hell with scheduling things like sporting events or flights or deliveries? The last thing any of us want is a solution to daylight saving time that ends up making us even more tired. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Alex McKeen is a reporter at the Toronto Star in their Vancouver Bureau, and she’s maybe as tired as I am. Hi, Alex.
Alex: Hi Jordan, How are you?
Jordan: I’m tired. Like I said, uh, this time shift always throws me for a loop.
Alex: Yeah, me too. I mean, I was actually, uh, not only experiencing the time change this weekend, but I also flew to Toronto and then back to Vancouver. So I’ve got double jet lag going on.
Jordan: So your province is perhaps maybe on the verge of getting rid of daylight saving time, and we will talk about that. But first, because this is a really good part of the story, can you just tell me who is Ray Saunders.
Alex: Sure. Ray Saunders is a gentleman who just recently turned 80 years old, and not a lot of people in Vancouver may recognize his name, but they certainly would recognize his most famous creation. Ray Saunders is the maker of the Gastown Steam Clock, which is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the entire city of Vancouver. It’s this incredible clock that is powered by steam and has whistles. It plays a tune every, I think it’s about every 15 minutes or so. And tourists come and look at it in the context of this historic part of the city, Gastown with all its cobble streets. And they take pictures with it. And, um. Ray Saunders is the guy that built it. He built it in 1977 and for a long time he maintained it as well. Now it’s maintained by the city of Vancouver. But he built back block and, uh, 200 other public clocks in Vancouver, Canada, and all over the world. Two weekends a year he goes around to all of the public clocks in the city of Vancouver and surrounding area, and he has been the guy who’s responsible for manually changing those public clocks to reflect the time change at daylight saving time. So, he described to me that during the, the spring forward period, which just happened this past weekend, most of the public clocks, they’ll have kind of a speed up function. And so it’ll take about, uh, six seconds, he said, for the clocks to wind forward, uh, an hour to reflect the new daylight time. And of course, the opposite happens during the fallback period in November. So he’s been doing that for 20 years or so.
Jordan: It seems so quaint in a way, but this might be the last weekend that he’ll ever do it. Tell me about that.
Alex: Yeah, that’s right. It might be the last weekend he ever does it. Uh, and it’s, you know, it’s kind of fitting in a way because as Ray described to me when we were talking, he’s getting older. He unfortunately experienced a fall recently, which made ladder climbing a lot more challenging for him. Of course, you have to climb up a ladder in order to reach the public clock spaces. So that’s part of this task that he’s been doing for the last couple of decades. Um, so, but personal reasons aside and personal limitations aside, um, he is also possibly the last weekend that, uh, that this kind of task will be required in the City of Vancouver because, uh, BC is looking at just nixing the time changes altogether. Um, and I think you’re right. It is, there is something kind of quaint about it. If I could you just describe a little bit about, uh, something that struck me talking to Ray, it was that he has this really interesting relationship with clocks and time. So I mean, I’m a millennial and I will admit that most of the time that I’m actually checking the time, I do wear a wristwatch, but most of the time I’m just looking at my computer screen or looking at my phone. That’s the thing that’s like really intuitive to me. Ray has this, this cool relationship with clocks where he says, look, there’s something lost when you’re just looking at numbers on a screen. A clock face, the circular nature of it, the fact that the hands are always kind of moving around, they tell us something about the time that has passed and the time that is yet to come. It’s more, uh, you know, accurate to the way that we actually walk through life. And I thought that was such an interesting idea and not anything that I had considered at all. And so I think he, his sense of affection for these public clocks and the analog nature of them really came through.
Jordan: So why is British Columbia considering getting rid of daylight saving time. And how did that movement spring up and come to be?
Alex: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, and different people will tell you different responses as to the origin story of why British Columbia is dealing with this thing. But I’m going to start with the practical elements of it, which is that this is a conversation that is also happening, uh, South of the border in the Western States. So Washington, Oregon, California, all considering changing to a permanent daylight time. And that has pretty significant implications for us here in British Columbia because we’re coordinated with those dates. There’s a lot of commerce that happens between those dates. Even things like work scheduling, that happens all along the West Coast. These are things that it makes sense to be in the same time as them. So, uh, Washington last fall passed legislation to change their approach to time, to permanent daylight time. And that hasn’t happened yet because they need approval by the, uh, the Federal Congress there in order to make it happen. But our premier, John Horgan, uh, here in British Columbia, was in conversation with the governor of Washington State and said, look, maybe this is something we’re interested in in British Columbia as well. It’s something that the government launched a public consultation on. They sent out a survey and they received within the first month or so, they received more completed surveys than they ever have in the history of all public consultations on this topic of changing to permanent daylight time. So they received 223,000 completed surveys from British Columbians. And overwhelmingly, 93% of people said, get rid of it. We don’t want time changes anymore. We just want a permanent time.
Jordan: Is that something that we see elsewhere in the world? You mentioned it’s happening already on the West Coast of the US but also some parts of Canada don’t have it as well.
Alex: That’s true. And you know, after I published this story on what BC is doing, I got quite a lot of emails from folks in Saskatchewan, because the way I described it in the story was that Saskatchewan is on a permanent Central Standard Time, but the folks in Saskatchewan reminded me over email that in fact, according to the longitude that Saskatchewan is, that it should be on Mountain Timezone. So the same time zone as Alberta. So the fact that it’s on permanent Central Standard Time actually means that it’s more on a permanent daylight time, similar to what BC is trying to do. So it all gets a little bit confusing. But since about 1966 Saskatchewan has been the Canadian exception to this time change practice that we have been doing, and they’ve been on most places in Saskatchewan anyway, have been on permanent Central Standard Time. Alberta has considered it. I understand that there’s also a private members bill in Ontario on this topic, so it’s something that people are increasingly aware of, but the one that has really caught my attention in the last couple of weeks was the Yukon. Because of course, the Yukon is also would a jurisdiction along the West coast, and they’ve already pulled the trigger. They’ve said, okay. We went to move the clocks forward an hour this past weekend, and we’re not going to change them again. It’s just going to stay at that. So Yukon has is the one that most recently has actually made the changes that British Columbia is talking about making.
Jordan: What is the case in this day and age for daylight saving time? Can you make one?
Alex: You know, not really. The experts that I’ve spoken to about this topic, they do have arguments for and against standard time compared to daylight time. So the time we’re on in the fall compared to the time we’re on in the summer right now, and the one that we’re on right now is daylight time. So longer evenings with sunlight. And there are arguments for and against those two things, but the actual switching back and forth there is, as far as I can tell, pretty much consensus that this is a bad thing. It’s not good for people to be in a state of one hour of social jet lag. I mean, as you described, both you and I are kind of feeling like we’re having to wake up an hour earlier all of this week. And that’s the effect of changing our clocks, our social clocks, the clocks by which we make our, our calendars and our social plans and our professional plans is out of whack with the clock that we’ve gotten used to. So we are on a form of jet lag. And this has all sorts of effect on people, especially kids and their sleep patterns. It can make people more irritable. There are studies that have been done that have shown that it increases the rate of heart attack and stroke as well as traffic accidents. So there are all sorts of negative effects that switching back and forth have. There’s not really very much of a good reason to stay on it. And it seems like the reason we do is for simple coordination, because there are all kinds of jurisdictions that would need to independently decide to make the switch in order for everyone to be coordinated in that kind of effort.
Jordan: That makes sense. My next question for you, had you not answered it was, is there actual evidence beyond just the fact that it’s annoying to me and annoying to you and hundreds of thousands of people? But if we have studies and we have evidence and it seems like multiple places are making this move anyway, what would it actually take? What are the logistics involved in getting rid of this? What happens when you simply say, okay, we’re not doing it anymore?
Alex: Well, it’s actually pretty simple here in Canada. I’m sure actually the provincial politicians who have worked on getting this thing changed would maybe disagree with me, but it’s simpler in Canada than it is in the United States anyway, because it’s a provincial jurisdiction. So if the province decides they want to change it, they can change it. The state that we’re at right now in British Columbia is that we have passed legislation that allows the government to make this change, to say, we’re not going to do this switch anymore. We’re just going to be in permanent daylight time. So the government can, at any point just pull the trigger and say, it’s over. No more. No more time changes. The reason they haven’t yet is because they’re still kind of waiting to see what happens with the jurisdiction South of the border, Washington, California, and Oregon. Because there is a preference to be, you know, coordinated with them. But otherwise, that’s all that needed to happen was British Columbia just passes this legislation. And then, you know, as soon as they put it into effect, it will be changed. That’s exactly what happened in Yukon as well, and what could happen in any other Canadian jurisdiction. A bit more complicated in in the States because it needs to be approved by Congress, which is is not the case here. The federal government doesn’t have a say.
Jordan: But assuming that not every single province in Canada or you know, the corresponding, uh, States in the US approves it at the same time, what kind of problems can that create? For instance, I ask this because I want you to tell me about Creston, BC.
Alex: Yeah. Creston, BC is a really interesting example. And I should say, it’s not the only example of exceptions to time changes throughout the country. There are certain areas, if you look at a time zone map of Canada, there are some places that are on permanent times throughout the country, including the North parts of British Columbia, that captures Dawson Creek and, uh, the province of Saskatchewan, Cole Harbor as well is an example. So it’s, it’s not the only one, but Creston is a particularly interesting one, I think, because it’s this small valley in the eastern part of the province and it is on permanent Mountain Time, so it’s on the same time as, uh, as Alberta, and it doesn’t change back and forth. So they’re on Mountain Standard Time, year round, and they never change. Basically what that means is if and when the province of British Columbia changes to permanent daylight time, Pacific daylight time, then they will be coordinated with Creston. They will be making a change that, uh, that puts the whole province on. Uh, on the same time schedule as this small valley. It’s about 5,000 people who live there. And currently when they go for a drive out to Cranbrook, which is only about an hour away, um, they could, during the daylight time, which is right now in Cranbrook, uh, they’re experiencing a time change in that hour long drive that they have.
Jordan: See my question is, given, uh, all these little pockets and shifts between provinces and states, do we not need to– and I know most global bodies across the world are, uh, busy with other things right now, but in general, wouldn’t it make more sense just to go in front of the world and be like, look, this is over for everybody starting now? Like just wipe the whole thing out.
Alex: Well sure, but who, who gets to make that call is the question, right? That’s the problem. Cause no single body has the jurisdiction to say, look, we’re just getting rid of this thing. Um, it’s something that is dictated by a bunch of different jurisdictions independently. So yeah, I mean, it could be great to just say, look, let’s get rid of this, let’s all just be on the same page, but I’ve even heard arguments from people saying, let’s just get rid of time zones. Like, why do we have to adhere to those nine to five cultural phenomenon that we have? We can just have no time zones at all. And on one side of the world, they’re working at 12:00 AM and then the other side of the world are working at noon. So there are lots of different kinds of arguments about the ways in which we could be coordinated. But as of right now, those questions are determined by country, by States, and in Canada, by the provinces.
Jordan: Is your sense that BC is kind of held hostage by the decision on the West Coast in the US or would they eventually, because Lord knows how long it might take to get congressional approval, would they ever just go ahead and take the first step and then hope the Americans catch up?
Alex: It’s possible Jordan. I don’t know. It’s a good question because my impression, as I said at the beginning of this conversation, is that BC first started thinking about this kind even in response to the states South of the border. So the idea that it could go ahead without them seems maybe a little bit counterintuitive, but at the same time, the British Columbia government consulted with the population here and they got an overwhelming response saying, we want to get rid of these time changes. So now the premier, John Horgan, has this 93% mandate to move the province that you permanent daylight time. And he has said, just last week, he said, look, we, we still want to coordinate with Washington, Oregon, California if we can. But we are looking at possibly doing head with this though, because it’s clear that this is what British Columbia wants. So it remains to be seen, but he’s kind of balancing right now the desire to be coordinated, which is a real factor for a lot of people, and the desire to just stop putting ourselves through this one hour of social jet lag twice a year.
Jordan: Give the good people of British Columbia what they asked for.
Alex: Exactly.
Jordan: Thank you so much, Alex, for joining us.
Alex: Thanks, Jordan. Appreciate it.
Jordan: Alex McKeen at the Toronto Star’s Vancouver Bureau. That was The Big Story. Just trying to take your mind off the madness of the world for a bit. You can find plenty of stories about the madness of the world at thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can find every episode, we tweet them all at @thebigstoryFPN on Twitter. You can find a whole bunch more podcasts, if you’d like podcasts that aren’t about news, at frequencypodcastnetwork.com and you can get any podcasts that you find at frequencypodcastnetwork.com in your favourite podcast player. And if you like them, you should rate them and review them because those reviews matter. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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