Daylight saving time 2021: Here’s when to turn your clocks back and how it started
Global News
As daylight time ends, clocks will roll back on Nov. 7 in most time zones in Canada.
Canadians will get an extra hour of sleep this weekend thanks to the seasonal end to daylight time rolling back the clock an hour.
On Sunday, Nov. 7, clocks should automatically or manually be adjusted to go back an hour at 2 a.m. in most time zones across Canada. However, Yukon, most of Saskatchewan and some parts of British Columbia and Quebec stay on standard time.
The changing of the clocks has become a controversial topic over the years with provincial politicians in B.C. and Ontario wanting to do away with the century-old practice. Ontario tabled and unanimously passed a private members bill called the “The Time Amendment Act,” in 2020. The B.C. legislature passed similar legislation in 2019, but the process has been delayed due to American states in the same time zone not having yet followed suit.
In the 19th century, it was New Zealand entomologist George Hudson who first proposed the adoption of modern daylight saving time in 1895. Hudson proposed the change to allow him to spend more hours inspecting and finding insects while it was still bright out.
The accreditation around daylight saving time can be murky, as some even say Benjamin Franklin was the originator after writing a satirical letter in 1784. The idea really began to get popular shortly after Hudson’s proposal and British activist, William Willett wanted more sunlight so he could enjoy the sunshine during summer.
The earliest municipalities anywhere in the world to have documented their adoption of daylight saving time were the small towns of Port Arthur and Fort William in eastern Ontario on May 1, 1908. The two towns eventually merged to become what is now known as Thunder Bay.
At the time, a resident of Port Arthur, John Hewitson wanted the change to gain an extra hour of daylight for working people to have some more leisure time in the evenings. Hewitson’s suggestion was eventually voted on and adopted, with nearby communities like Orillia, Ont., also soon adopting the practice.
Internationally, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary were the first countries that enacted daylight saving time in 1916 during the First World War to save coal and fuel.