THUNDER BAY – It's time to turn clocks back one hour as we move into standard time this Sunday, and we have nobody but ourselves to thank for this.
Richard Mastrangelo, an associate archivist with the City of Thunder Bay Archives, explained how it all began in 1908 when Fort William and Port Arthur became two of the first places in the world to institute a form of daylight saving time.
"On May 2, both cities switched to eastern time and back again to western or central time on Nov. 1," Mastrangelo said. "By 1910, both cities had adopted eastern time, which was considered to be a permanent move to daylight saving time."
Those who favoured a time change argued there would be an extra hour of daylight for sports and leisure activities, gardening and family time. Most importantly, there would be more daylight for the arriving rail cars and ships transporting grain in the navigation and agricultural industries.
"Part of that also was about coordinating workers who were coming off the ships and the trains from Toronto time with the port workers in Thunder Bay who were on the different time zones and ended up having overlapping lunch periods," Mastrangelo added.
"That causes some friction and loss of efficiency."
Polls, consultations and election plebiscites took place and the two cities arbitrarily jumped back and forth from central time to eastern time. At one point, both communities found themselves in two different time zones.
During the First World War in 1916, Mastrangelo says the Dominion Government proposed daylight saving time as we now know it, for the whole country.
"Implementing it meant double daylight saving time for the Lakehead during the spring and summer. Both cities went back and forth on the issue many times as it was implemented again and again across Canada over the next 60 years," he said.
In 1972, the citizens of Thunder Bay voted overwhelmingly in favour of permanently implementing the spring switch to eastern daylight time and fall reversion to eastern standard time.
The fall time change also signals a good time to test batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) detectors.