I never really thought much about Daylight Saving Time prior to going to school in Lethbridge. I’m from Saskatchewan, we don’t have to change our clocks and I like it that way. Many people outside of our province, however, got to adjust clocks back to their regular time zone on Nov. 5.
While going to school I met a friend who was from Alberta, but didn’t like the premise of it. Her reasoning, “If you take a blanket and cut the top third off, then sew it onto the bottom, it’s the same length; it just looks a little different.”
And that’s exactly it, you’re not magically creating more time, you’re simply moving your clock back an hour so it appears lighter out later during the summer – even though they’ve just played with their clocks a little bit.
There’s a Corner Gas episode titled “No Time Like the Presents,” season 5, episode 15, where Hank resets his watch to be on Daylight Saving Time in Saskatchewan… and confusion ensues as he just keeps resetting his watch ending up an entire day ahead of everyone else.
Time is relative. We’ve decided as a global community to accept time zones and abide by them. When we decided we didn’t really like the time zones we were in, people decided to create Daylight Saving Time.
It’s true, during the summer everyone enjoys sunlight later in the day and Daylight Saving Time does allow people to have this. However, when it comes to a rural area based on agriculture those with cattle are governed by the cattle’s clocks. Livestock is accustomed to being milked or fed at certain times.
For most people, however, they tend to not like getting up early, so tricking you into thinking you are getting up at a normal time by moving the clock back is helpful in waking up. Then with a little extra daylight, people are able to do more throughout the day because they’re utilizing that hour.
And for many businesses that flip flop of the hour results in more money in their pockets as people are out for longer in the daylight and are not sleeping through that hour.
Studies have actually found that heart attack risk increases by 25 percent when the clocks move ahead, while the researchers discovered that the risk drops by 21 percent when the clocks fall back.
Apparently our circadian clocks (our biological clock, which relates to a solar day) never completely adjusts to the shift in daylight hours when it comes to springing forward or falling back.
Originally Daylight Saving was suggested as a way to save money. More light in the evening saves on electricity bills and was focused to boost industrial production during the First World War… the problem today, however, is that studies have shown that lighting isn’t the driving force or energy use anymore –heat and air conditioning drive the majority of the bill these days, so you’re not really saving anything; while you’re actually spending more on activities to do in the “extra” light of the day.
