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LETTER: Time for a change

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.
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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. SaskatchewanB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ·™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 bodyB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ·™s internal clock on the two spring and fall game days.

ItB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ·™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



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