The statement in a recent editorial, that Saskatchewan is on year-round standard time, is true but not absolutely true. An international agreement in 1884 designated longitude 105° W as the boundary separating the Mountain and Central time zones.
The demarcation between the two caused a split in Saskatchewan smack dab down the middle, leaving the eastern region in alignment with Manitoba time-wise, and the western region in alignment with Alberta. Saskatchewan’s dichotomy played havoc with social and business interactions within the province. The game of springing the clock forward and falling back twice a year further discombobulated the disarray, rendering the situation untenable.
Saskatchewan was unhappy, and blew the whistle in 1966. The time inconsistency and the clock-shifting game were ended by relocating the goalposts from the middle of the province to the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. The eastern half remained fixed at CST, and the western half synchronized with it by adopting MDST on a permanent basis, both clocks becoming the same. The residents of Saskatchewan are joyously chuffed that their province is on uniform time throughout, and is rid of the semi-annual flip-flops.
Manitobans too are happy because they live next to Saskatchewan, and share CST with them province-wide in the winter months. Albertans are in smiles having all of Saskatchewan on Alberta time during the summer months. A welcome spin-off that accrued from the reformation is the cutback in the surge of traffic accidents and cardiac myopathies that were being caused by tampering with the human body’s internal clock on the two spring and fall game days.
It’s a unique situation in which a rational half-true footing is distinctly better than the flawed scheme that had been perpetuated by reliance on the original whole truth.
Russ Rockerbie
Saanich