Did you take advantage of daylight saving time?
Since our resent time change went into effect Mar.12, was it a bit of a struggle to get up an hour earlier for work or school? This happens when the powers that be fast-forward our clocks to daylight saving time in the late winter. How did your children fare? They normally go to sleep at a drop of a hat. But getting up an hour early, were they cranky and late for school? That’s because their biological clock takes some time to adjust. Some people find no discomfort at all, except the effort of changing all their clocks (I have seven). For others it takes longer.
I guess you have to look at the bright side to see the great advantages of having an hour more in the evening. Just think, you can go for a walk at 8 o’clock in the evening now and still get back before dark.
Did you hear that Alberta may eliminate DST next spring and stay on Mountain Standard Time? What a bonanza that will be. With British Columbia and us Yukoners still on Pacific DST in the summer and Alberta on mountain all year long that would mean we are all on the same time. Businesspeople can talk to each other without worrying that they may have gone to lunch. It also will make travel easy to coordinate.
And our dear Americans are still trying to figure out whether they should eliminate DST. Thirteen or so states are considering it. And Alaska, our neighbor to the west, started thinking about it two years ago and they’re still thinking. Of course, Alaska is just trying to get closer to the eastern states. How can you do business with your own country when most people have gone to lunch or even supper?
Let’s say the Yukon changed to standard time and eliminated DST altogether. Would it inconvenience anybody at all? We have people who work shifts, like nurses, who must get really rattled by time changes. Anybody who has to get up in the middle of the night to go to work is not living a healthy lifestyle. And schoolkids must feel the disruption through loss of sleep which affects their concentration. How about us old farts who have enough problems?
What do the working-class people gain form a time change? What do kids and seniors gain by this twice-a-year jolt to our bodily functions? Absolutely nothing. We are all aware of the world around us and time zones. But to change to a preconceived notion that an hour more of daylight in the evening for eight months each year is a benefit to society, well, I beg to differ.
Our cautious local governments will no doubt wait until somebody else makes a move to eliminate daylight saving time, before they make this daring decision. Saskatchewan went first.
Don Graham
Whitehorse