Daylight Saving Time Rules! Too Bad for Arizona, Saskatchewan and Sonora.
Published on March 11th, 2010.
If you’re like me, you can’t wait to SPRING FORWARD this weekend and rejoice in the gift of later sunlight given to us by the benevolent minds of Ben Franklin and the more obscure New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. According to legend, while Franklin was an envoy to France in 18th century, he suggested the lazy French wake up earlier to take advantage of more sunlight and save on candles; the compromise being to set the clocks ahead one hour cos no one wanted to get up early. Even better, Hudson’s plea had more modern-day parallel: his shift job didn’t allow him enough time to collect bugs after work so he diligently proposed we jump ahead an hour in the summer, thus giving us what we call Daylight Saving Time today.
We’re all on this fun train however except for the states of Arizona and Hawaii in the U.S., the province of Saskatchewan in Canada and the State of Sonora in Mexico. I wondered why so I grabbed my knowledge shovel and went digging.
ARIZONA
This state seemed the most likely not to join the party as they were also the last state in the union to observe Martin Luther King Jr. day. However, they were on DST during WWI and WWII in a national effort to conserve energy. My thought was that with that state being so hot in the summertime that another hour of sunlight is the last thing they would want. I was right. So for 6 months out of the year, me and John McCain share the same time zone. Sweet.
SASKATCHEWAN
Apparently as recent as the 1960s, each of the divided areas that you see above were able to have whatever time zone they wanted. Talk about freedom! I’d have my sun going down at midnight if I could. As you can imagine, the fallout was pretty severe with all these Saskatchewanians missing appointments with people on the other side of the province–family gatherings were a mess. The decision to get everyone on the same time zone was a bit complex so they had to take an all-or-nothing approach to this and just stick to one time, ALL THE TIME and not mess with the clocks ever, lest they take a big step back to their chronological dark age they fled not 50 years ago.
SONORA
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that because this area is just south of Arizona that they kind of just said “let’s do that” and voila. Pretty convenient for those crossing the border as they won’t have to reset their watches. That’s important.
HAWAII
I’ve never been here but I’d imagine that any time here is awesome so why f— with it?
-A
Filled under Life.
