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British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

cbc.ca

481–490 of 583 posts

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#481
post #460
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian provinces are structurally more like countries within the EU than states within Germany. The EU operates with more than one timezone.

Yes, but my experience tells me that you'll interact (on a level where timezones matter) much more with people in your country than in others - and this has nothing to do with small states vs big provinces, I don't know enough about Canada if every big company has offices in Vancouver an Toronto (or Ottawa, Montreal) that work closely together.

Not really. That might change due to what is going on in the world, which is now seeing provinces having to become serious about expanding into new markets, but in the past sharing timezones with the USA has been much more important for the sake of industry. Again, things are now starting to change, but historically the provinces haven't even had free trade between themselves — despite having free trade agreements with the USA. That's how much they have worked together.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#482
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people hate standard time in winter because the sun sets at 4 or 5, and they want the sun to instead set at 8 or 9 like it does in summer. DST in winter doesn't actually give you the 8 or 9 sunset, it gives you a 5 or 6 sunset (which doesn't get you all that much) combined with moving your sunrise to 8 or 9, which causes its own set of issues most people don't think about. The last time we went to year-round…

> which doesn't get you all that much After college I moved from the far western edge of one timezone to the far eastern edge of another zone. I grew up with 5-5:30pm sunsets in winter, and now I live with 4-4:30pm sunsets. I moved here 25 years ago, and every single year when November/December come around and I get those early sunsets I hate it. It's one of the reasons I'd like to move away from here. I know it's ju…

I live in Atlanta (western edge of US Eastern time) and permanent DST sounds horrible - the sun would rise at 8:45 in early January. Honestly I'd prefer we be on permanent standard time. Call it permanent Central Daylight Time if you must.

On the other hand, I used to live in Boston (eastern edge of US Eastern time) and those 4:15 sunsets were pretty depressing. Permanent DST sounds reasonable there.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#483

I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST. I respect there are economic arguments for pe…

I'm in favour of PDT from a forward-thinking perspective.

With climate change causing extreme heat events to be more frequent, having the sun rise later in the day will defend the work hours of those who find themselves labouring outside without having to adjust the hours that they work.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have preferred permanent standard time to permanent daylight time. Do you have children? In past HN threads, the preference largely comes down to whether you have children (and want more early morning light for safer trips to school) or not.

When we had kids I thought daylight savings time was going to be some kind of nightmare because ever DST thread on the internet cites children as the reason why's it terrible. Then it was a complete non-issue for our kids. I had this conversation with several parent friends and they couldn't figure it out either. At most we've had a day or two where the kids wake up 10-20 minutes later than the target time, but it's…

Me too. Who are these people whose kids' sleep schedules are regular enough that this makes it noticeably worse?

(There was one year where the time change in March did actually have a noticeable effect on my kid... and a few days later, just when she had gotten back to "normal", everything shut down for COVID.)

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#486
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what everyone says. But it turns out people hate spending their morning in darkness for more light at night. Which makes perfect sense: https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-... > the inkling of light they get during their winter commute It's not an inkling. Unless you roll out of bed and instantly onto your commute, you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every…

I only lived under the saving regime for a few years and I don't remember it being particularly bad. I like how the light signals the shift from angst season to normal season, though. I'd rather not have a clock and farm from sunrise to sunset, to be honest.

Well, days get longer without DST too (in countries far enough from the equator, but those nearer to the equator don't have to worry about DST anyway). What bothers me about DST is that just before the clock is moved forward, the sun starts rising before I have to get up. Then the clock is moved, and suddenly I have to get up when it's pitch dark again! Great...

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#487

I would have preferred permanent standard time to permanent daylight time. But I accept I'm in the minority, and even permanent daylight time is far superior to changing clocks twice a year.

> even permanent daylight time is far superior to changing clocks twice a year

God bless you for keeping that top of mind. So many people miss the forest for the trees here.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#488
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe people will finally learn the difference between PST and PDT.

They won't. In my professional experience, having needed to work with relatively unsophisticated people across many time zones, the only thing that worked consistently was "[City] time". That way people could always check 'what time is it in X now' or 'when it's X in [City], what time is it here', and get correct responses. Descriptors like "Mountain time" are too vague, especially when there are various places that…

My theory on why people use "xST" is that the word "standard" time sounds like it is the fancy official time.

When people say EST and mean EDT I'm tempted to just show up an hour late, if it's a meeting I don't want to go to.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#489
post #253
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has to be latitude dependent. > you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every morning Hah "hours". Not in Northern Europe you're not. My commute is dark on both sides. If I had to choose which side I'd prefer to be brighter I'd prefer the end of the day rather than feeling like my daylight has been wasted in the office. I shift my schedule in winter to make up for this as best I can.

I guess. I'm at 46 degrees and civil twilight at Christmas starts at 7am. I get up at 6:30, so yeah, dead of winter, I spend 30 minutes in darkness. But that's better than 1:30. I guess it kinda hinges on this idea of "wasting" daylight. I don't feel like that. I want the sun to wake me up, and have no problem doing whatever I like when it's dark in the evening. Do people generally go on hikes after work? I go out fo…

Bike after work! (own latitude - 45.4N). In the summer the days are long enough that, with daylight saving time, you can be an office slave and still have time for a significant bike ride after work (having biked to work in the first place).

Also at this latitude, without daylight saving time, the sun would be waking you up at 4AM! Totally happy with the time switch, but if it has to go, yes, give me daylight saving time all the time. Winter is dark anyway.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#490
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's big (I've just not seen it myself), but also it's only 5m people in BC if I can believe Wikipedia. That's like a big city. Maybe that actually makes it less of a problem though, we simply don't know :)

I think if Canada was just two or maybe even three BCs wide, we probably would have settled on just one timezone for the whole country, but the country is so wide that the sun today will set 4 hours and 6 minutes later in Halifax than it will in Vancouver, we just fundamentally do need timezones inside the country, otherwise it'd be a total mess. Once you start putting timezones inside a country, the provincial borde…

The US is sort of intermediate here. In a few cases state borders are time zones borders, but in practice they're determined by which big city people are most integrated with and that often oesn't line up well with state borders. For example the bit of Indiana that's closest to Chicago is on Chicago time.
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