Meanwhile from south to north, we also accommodate nature’s own alternating seasons between the lush Carolinian forest in Ontario’s southernmost area and the High Arctic latitudes far above the tree-line which bask in 24-hour summer sunlight and are cloaked with full darkness in winter.

Into this convoluted mix was added the invention of Daylight Saving Time. From the early 1900s use of Daylight Saving Time, often called “Fast Time,” was encouraged throughout Canada on a voluntary basis. It’s provincial jurisdiction so across-Canada variety appeared. Even the “time saving” schedule itself got changed, from starting the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March, and Standard Time no longer resuming the last Sunday of October but the first Sunday in November.

War changes everything. Daylight Saving was first imposed by edict in Germany on April 30, 1916, to conserve fuel for producing weapons in factories. Canada followed suit by 1918. After the war, Prime Minister Borden’s government heeded protests of rural MPs, including Muskoka’s Dr. Peter McGibbon, about Daylight Saving’s adverse economic and social impacts. Farmers lost an hour’s work each day because cows could not be milked any earlier and heavy dew on the ground made field work impossible. Ottawa repealed the temporary war measure and provinces resumed control.

Urbanites had fewer problems with Daylight Saving time. Ontario’s abundant electricity for lighting, heating, and operating machinery meant offices and factories no longer had to shut down with darkness, while streetlights and electrified homes effectively extended winter’s days. But even people whose lives run like clockwork have diverse time-sensitive tasks to perform, so reaching consensus about altering the clock twice yearly remained challenging.

During World War II, Ottawa again invoked emergency powers to force daylight saving on the entire country. After the war provinces resumed control, with a patchwork of mixed results. Saskatchewan contained three gerrymandered time zones which creating such confusion the railways ran schedules on Standard Time year round.

The issue lives on. Last March the European Parliament voted to permanently remove Daylight Saving Time, and if implemented, 2021 will be the last time EU countries make the seasonal clock change. In November British Columbia’s government introduced legislation to scrap bi-annual clock changes, make Daylight Saving permanent, and rename the province’s zone “Pacific Time.”

What time do you have?