Z - Zed is for Time Zones - Blogging from A to Z April 2020 Challenge!

Today Z - Zed is for Time Zones

  Blogging about British Columbia Genealogy Resources

Standard Time map for Canada, National Research Council Canada. In British Columbia (and the Yukon), Daylight Saving Time mostly begins the second Sunday in March at 02:00 PST and ends the first Sunday in November, 02:00 PDT. Spring ahead; fall back - one hour. 

Except where time doesn't change or join the majority! If you follow the BC/Alberta border on the winter map and watch the colours, you will see where it's always summer time in BC - Charlie Lake, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson, Fort St. John, Hudson's Hope, Taylor and Tumbler Ridge: all Mountain Standard Time, never Daylight Saving. Then there's Cranbrook, Fernie, Golden, Invermere, and Sparwood: all Mountain Time but with Daylight Saving. Except for Creston: Mountain Standard Time, no Daylight Saving. Got it? 

This used to seem more important in the days not too long ago when a long distance call to family or friends was a treat, but you didn't want to wake people up. Now we text; we e-mail - conversations often have time gaps, no problem. 

But right now, this year, many of us are video chatting and attending online meetings and genealogy talks all across the world. As I was musing yesterday, time zones suddenly matter. Here's BC in Canada above; follow this link to a world map like I wanted for my fridge. Click on a country's link to learn about its time quirks.

Some families may have stories about time changes - funny or not, depending on if you missed a train or flight by not paying attention. 

I remember the first time I went to Ottawa - all by myself - on a plane. My mother, who I thought was sometimes a fussbudget, impressed on me that I must call her as soon as I got there to let them know I had safely arrived. And, good girl that I was, I went right to a pay phone, put all my change in and called her. Only to hear her say, "Diane, it's 1 am!!" Oh, well! Whose fault was that? I never forgot and I don't think she did either. 

The Honourable Donald A. Smith driving the last spike to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway. 7 Nov. 1885, B.C. B&W albumen print; Photographer: Alexander Ross, Best & Co., Winnipeg. Credit: Alexander Ross / Library and Archives Canada / C-003693.

Here's Sandford Fleming in his big beard and top hat watching the driving of the last spike on the Canadian Pacific Railway at Craigellachie, British Columbia, 7 November 1885, at 9:22. ¹ We owe our time zones to him. A Scottish emigrant to Canada, he was a renaissance man able and interested in many things, He had surveyed the CPR route through the Rockies and now was a CPR director.

He called his world time concept 'Cosmic Time', using Greenwich Time, a 24 hour clock, and allowing for local time zones. In an paper to the Smithsonian Museum in 1886, he wrote 

"At midsummer, 1886, the Canadian Pacific Railway was opened from the Atlantic to the Pacific [Port Moody, BC] and the 24-hour system went into force in "running" through trains. The example set by the railway has been followed in the towns and villages along the lines, and the inhabitants generally having experienced the advantages of the change, no desire is expressed in any quarter to return to the old usage." 

A little optimistic, he was. Train schedules might be in the 24-hour clock but few likely used it in in ordinary (non railway/non military) life. Fleming goes on to include a footnote ² reporting how easily an extra dial, even a paper one, can be added to a watch to show the 24 hour clock in Arabic and Roman numerals. I bet he'd done that. I wonder if there's a watch of his in a collection somewhere?

Other transportation systems didn't use the 24-hour system and, for that reason, and others, many times the 'Daylight Saving' question has come up. It was first imposed nationally in Canada during WW I and again provincially during WW II although so many objected it was lifted within a few months. The intention was supposed to save fuel and give more daylight hours for work, for example, at WW II shipyards, and time for recreation, including gardening. Many, especially in rural areas, have always opposed 'changing the clocks'.

In 1920, in Chilliwack, for example, a farmer interviewed had this to say about keeping Daylight Saving:

FARMER TALKS DAYLIGHT SAVINGS

Interviewed by a Coast newspaper representative upon the daylight saving question, Mr. A. Mercer is quoted as saying: “In 1918, the excuse for daylight saving was ‘gasoline’,  in 1919, the excuse was ‘war gardens’, and this year it is ‘lawn bowling’. ³

 Both the City of Chilliwack and the District of Chilliwhack had agreed to ask the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) to go on Standard Time, "normal time" as daylight saving schedules caused hardships for milk shippers and others. The Surrey Board of Trade had forwarded a resolution opposing the switch to Daylight Saving Time, pointing out the "dislocation" to business, farmers and others, including school children who might have to leave school early to catch the train.  The Chilliwack Retail Merchants Association, however, supported Daylight Saving. ⁴

At the 1920 BC Dairymen's Association Convention in Vancouver, no one spoke up for Daylight Saving. As one Washington breeder said,

...the farmers of the U.S. found the cows would not work with the new clock, that the dew appeared on the old schedule and the children would not go to bed with the new time. 

The BC Minister of Agriculture said it unlikely any such legislation would be heard at the coming session. ⁵

It wasn't till 1952 that a provincial plebiscite approved Daylight Saving for British Columbia, but rural areas were still against it.

REFERENCES

1. An article about this event and the photograph is on Canadian Pacific Railway Set-off Siding. 

2."Time Reckoning for the Twentieth Century", Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886, Washington [DC], 1889,  pages 345-366. "At midsummer...." quotation and dial footnotes, page 355.

3.  The Chilliwack Progress, Chilliwack, BC, 25 Mar 1920, Thursday, p. 1.

4. The Chilliwack Progress, Chilliwack, BC, 10 June 1920, page 1.

5. The Chilliwack Progress, Chilliwack, BC, 29 January 1920, page 7.

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