Click here to listen to Roger Currie’s commentary on Daylight Savings Time
Spring ahead, fall back.
A week ago, I went through that ritual for the first time in seven years.
For six years, beginning in 2006, I lived in Saskatchewan, where the clocks never change.
Daylight Savings Time used to be about the most divisive issue in the land of the Roughriders. Shortly after his Saskatchewan Party was first elected in 2007, Brad Wall promised to put it on the ballot in the next election. But it soon became clear that almost nobody cares any more.
Now that I’m in Manitoba, the media trots out those annual stories about the Monday after the spring time change. Researchers are convinced that it’s just about the most dangerous day of the year to operate heavy machinery. It’s about that hour of sleep we lose in March, that doesn’t return until November.
The time change is also blamed for other strange behaviour, and they may have something there. On the Sunday when the clocks went ahead, I was irritable. I snapped at a few people who didn’t deserve such abuse. You know who you are, and I’m sorry.
Almost as annoying as losing an hour’s sleep is the confusion for Saskatchewan people when trying to deal with the rest of the world. On more than one occasion when I worked in Regina, I almost missed an important interview because I lost track of whether Ottawa or Toronto was two hours ahead of me, or only one.
I vaguely recall when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Saskatchewan farmers lobbied against the time change because they said it upset their cows, or some udder reason.
We are constantly lectured about the importance of the ‘global economy’, and reminded that we must live our lives 24/7. If that’s true, what does it matter which clock we follow ?
Say, what time is it anyway ?
I’m Roger Currie
