OK let’s take a poll: Who thinks Daylight Savings is a waste of time?
Now admittedly, I am a little biased.
As many of our readers may recall, I grew up in Creston, B.C. and besides being famous for our fruit and Kokanee beer, the other thing the town is known for is not changing time.
For better or worse, Creston is permanently locked on Pacific Standard Time. And for the most part everyone managed just fine.
Nor is Creston the only jurisdiction that has decided that changing clocks isn’t worth the effort. Fort St. John in northern B.C., Saskatchewan and Arizona are all perfectly happy to remain in one time zone.
The concept of daylight saving time goes back a long way. In 1895, New Zealander George Vernon Hudson proposed a two-hour daylight saving shift.
Hudson was a shift worker and amateur entomologist (he collected bugs) and wanted more daylight to aid in his collecting of bugs.
In England in 1905, prominent builder and outdoorsman William Willett also proposed the idea of DST. Willett was an avid golfer who was upset that he had to often cut his golf games short due to a lack of daylight.
It was not until World War I that daylight savings time actually started to gain some traction. On April 30, 1916, Germany became the first country to enact DST in an effort to conserve coal.
This is the same reasoning George W. Bush, former president of the United States, used in 2005, when he signed the Energy Policy Act, which, among other things, added almost a month to DST. The Bush administration argued that having an extra hour of daylight for another month would lower the energy consumption of the nation. To avoid time zone confusion Canada followed suit and aligned DST with the U.S.
Time for another unofficial poll: Hands up if anyone notices if their power bill goes down noticeably during DST.
On the other hand, there are a number of studies which show there is a definite link between DST and a number of negative health and safety issues.
A 2008 Swedish study found a higher incidence of heart attacks in the first three workdays after the clocks ‘spring forward.’
A number of insurance companies also report an increase in vehicle and workplace accidents in the days and weeks after the implentation of DST.
All of this for an inconclusive reduction in energy consumption.
So I for one say let’s get rid of this nonsense of changing the clock twice a year.
It is time for Alberta to join Saskatchewan and the other communities like Creston who do not change time.
