Spring forward, stuck in time
By Lethbridge Herald on March 7, 2026.
Morning Joe- Joe Manio Lethbridge Herald
Every March we participate in an unwanted archaic ritual. Clocks leap forward, sleep schedules implode and coffee sales spike. “Spring Forward” arrives like a bureaucratic prank…leaving parents negotiating with overtired children, shift workers recalculating paycheques and the rest of us wondering why we’re still pretending this charade makes sense.
There’s an old joke about daylight saving time (DST) that goes, when a Tribal Elder told about DST, he responded: “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom and have a longer blanket.”
It’s blunt, but mathematically undeniable. Moving an hour of daylight doesn’t create more daylight. It just relocates it.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has pledged to scrap DST, echoing signals from Vancouver that they too would prefer year-round consistency if neighbouring jurisdictions align. The rhetoric sounds familiar…so does the skepticism and deja vu from Albertans.
The clock-changing experiment originated during the First World War with a simple premise: shift an hour of daylight into the evening to save fuel. Germany adopted daylight saving in 1916. Britain, Canada and others followed.
It resurfaced during the energy crises of the 1970s and stuck; less because it clearly works today, critics argue, but more because retiring it is politically awkward.
Alberta nearly ended the charade in 2021 with a referendum asking voters whether to adopt permanent DST. The question itself, however, was widely criticized as confusingly-worded, forcing voters to parse whether a “yes” meant ending the clock change or locking in summer hours year-round.
The referendum failed by a razor-thin margin—about 50.2 per cent opposed. The biannual ritual survived by roughly the population of a small town.
The debate didn’t disappear; it just hit snooze. Meanwhile DST supporters continue recycling familiar arguments.
Energy savings top the list, despite modern studies suggesting minimal reductions often offset by increased heating and air conditioning use. In an era of LED bulbs and home offices the coal-saving logic feels antique.
Public safety is another claim. Lighter evenings may reduce some crime but the flip side is darker mornings; not ideal for schoolchildren or commuters navigating icy Alberta roads before sunrise.
Then there’s economics… retailers and recreation industries like brighter evenings. Yet broader data is mixed because of productivity losses tied to sleep disruption; including spikes in workplace injuries and traffic collisions after “Spring Forward.”
Health researchers may be the least sentimental about DST. Losing an hour of sleep in one abrupt shift is more than a minor inconvenience. Studies have linked it to short-term increases in heart attacks and car crashes.
“Coordination” is the final rationalization. With Alberta doing business with other provinces and U.S. states, misaligned clocks can cause confusion. Several jurisdictions, however, function well without the twice-yearly shuffle.
Saskatchewan has effectively observed year-round standard time for decades. Yukon adopted permanent daylight saving time in 2020. British Columbia passed legislation in 2019 to move to permanent DST (once the U.S. west coast followed suit).
In the U.S., Arizona, Hawaii and several territories including Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have functioned on standard time year-round without any societal breakdown. The sun rises. Meetings start. Life goes on.
For a species that prides itself on adaptability our inability to agree on what time it is year-round is oddly revealing. The persistence of DST says less about necessity and more about our inertia and resistance to change.
In November we gain an hour…a cozy bonus. In March, we lose an hour. Humans are loss-averse and we feel subtraction more sharply than addition. “Fall Back” feels like a gift. “Spring Forward” feels like theft.
If Alberta finally ditches DST it won’t be revolutionary. It will be administrative. But it would end a century-old workaround that may have solved yesterday’s problems but in 2026 is just plain irritating.
Until then we’ll keep cutting a foot off the top of the proverbial blanket and stitching it to the bottom every March. And bleary-eyed and mildly resentful we’ll ask: “If we’re the most adaptable species on Earth, why can’t we adapt our clocks?”
22-21
“Why experts say permanent standard time is ‘undeniably’ better for us”
http://www.thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/4939267-why-experts-say-keeping-standard-time-is-undeniably-better-for-us/
We voted against keeping permanent daylight savings time in the referendum . We were not given the choice of voting for permanent standard time. We would have voted for it. We want permanent standard time. It would afford us crucial morning daylight hours and would be better for our circadian rhythm.
It is certainly true that there are more motor vehicle accidents at the time of the change in daylight saving time and the influence lasts for about a week after the change. Our family directly experienced this with a relative’s accident causing one death and one severe and lasting injury.
I am an old enough Albertan to know what life was like here before DST. We did, just fine, then.
“Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom and have a longer blanket.” exceptional!
so.ab’s link to the “benefits” of staying standard time is curious, however, why not then move the clock back an hour further than standard time to give us even more “morning” time, thus pretending we have more healthy morning time to work out in the cool weather…of which canada has so little throughout a year. what is of note in that link is that, if there is a robust study basis to the claim that there are less suicides when on standard time, then that should carry the day.
however, might we have even less suicides if we move an hour further back than what we have created as “standard” time?
what should not be of any factor in this most “significant” of our world issues is whether other jurisdictions change clock or not: in this day and age, where there is so much automation and around the clock business, time zones are pretty much of no significance.
DST/Standard Time or single DST, both medically unsound. Single Standard time year round, the obvious choice. Perhaps that is why leaders , here and abroad choose the former. After all, most operate with the level of a well trained slug.
good to see back, j!
from what i have read, it appears there are reasonable pros and cons to both of the time choices. however, the worst of the options is to keep toying with the clock. i have a couple of preferences, which i have shared (either a half hour move back in the fall and leave it alone afterward, as my first choice, but i like dst for the “later” day light if we are forced choice between that and standard).
mind you, in the end, it mostly boils down to how we each approach the day, as moving clocks hardly affects the actual amount of daylight we partake in. if one wants more early daylight, it is easy enough to go to bed a little earlier so as to be able to get up a little earlier.