THUNDER BAY – The annual leap forward in time is upon the city of Thunder Bay, which has had a considerably interesting history with the biannual time change.
Before the city was created from the twin cities of Port Arthur and Fort William, the area was one of the forerunners of daylight saving time in Canada, though not as we know it today.
Michael DeJong, curator/archivist with the Thunder Bay Museum, said the local start included a temporary switch between time zones.
“At the turn of the century, we were on Central Time here and, in and around 1905, the idea of daylight saving started to sort of bounce around here mostly spurred on by Mr. John Hewitson, who was a construction person at the time,” he said.
“His arguments for it were more or less the standard arguments -- recreation, more time in the evenings for sports, sitting outside, etcetera, etcetera.”
Starting in 1908, Port Arthur and Fort William officially changed over to Eastern Time in the spring and then back to Central Time in the fall, which was effectively the same as daylight saving time as we know it today.
The following year, the cities decided to do it again but this time Port Arthur voted to permanently change over to Eastern Time, while Fort William continued the biannual change.
“For a brief period, Fort William and Port Arthur were on different time zones, which of course was a bit confusing,” he said.
“But in 1910, everything more or less settled down and both cities voted for a permanent change to Eastern Time.”
City residents seemed happy with the results of the change, but that isn’t the end of the story. DeJong said things picked up again during the World Wars, when Canada began experimenting with daylight savings as an energy saving measure.
“That would of course mean that effectively Port Arthur and Fort William, for those time periods, would be double daylight saving time essentially,” he said.
“There was a little bit of controversy in both of those time periods, but then in 1972 it was permanently settled and that's when daylight saving time was adopted for both cities permanently and it has been the same ever since.”
To add to the confusion, Ontario passed a bill back in 2020 to permanently stay on daylight saving time. But, due to a caveat requiring both Quebec and New York State to also make the move at the same time, Ontario hasn’t officially made the change.
Until Quebec and New York decide to also permanently stay on daylight saving time, we still must make the change twice a year -- so don’t forget to set your clocks one hour forward on Sunday.
Also, now is also a good time to test your smoke detectors to make sure the batteries are working -- if they are not wired into your electricity.
