I have to say, I have never been so excited to see the sun! After weeks and weeks of overcast skies and falling precipitation, I finally feel as though summer is here! No longer am I waking up to the sound of rain, but I am waking up to a sky filled with sunshine and enjoying a day full of warmth. I finally feel as though I can put my UGGs away until the fall and flip flops can be my primary footwear for the next couple of months.
The funny thing about this rediscovered sunshine is that it now wakes me up at 4:50 a.m. as it peers through my blinds. Now, I would much rather the brightness of the sunshine waking me up rather than a hail or rain storm throughout the day. There is no question about it. And in all actuality, I am quite thankful for the brightly shining sun, especially given the last two months of weather.
But what I don't understand is that when we have this sunshine and heat for a limited time each and every year, why wouldn't a person do all that they could to have more? And what I am really getting at, is that I really don't understand why the province of Saskatchewan would go 'against the grain' in terms of daylight savings time.
I realize that Saskatchewan's decision was set in stone long ago. It was 1966 when the Saskatchewan Time Act was passed which standardized time province-wide and created a situation where Saskatchewan stays on central standard time year-round. But every other province in Canada adjusts their clocks. Some have even experimented with a two-hour change rather than only one-hour.
So why do the provinces change their time every spring and fall? It is quite simple really. The fact of the matter is that right now, the sun shines for about two hours while the majority of people are still in bed. So in order to take advantage of the sunlight, the provinces push their clocks ahead in the springtime and back in the fall.
So that means that right now the sun rises at 5:43 a.m. in Manitoba and sets at 9:52 p.m., while here in Carlyle, we see the sun rise at 4:51 a.m. and a sunset at 8:59 p.m. So for those of us that don't get up at 5 a.m., we lose out on daylight.
It's not like this debate hasn't come up before. I mean it comes up year-after-year during daylight savings time in the spring. Enough so, that during the 2007 election, Premier Brad Wall promised a referendum on daylight savings time. In March of this year however, the government changed their mind. They stated that an opinion poll, surveying 1,012 out of the 1,070,477 people that live in Saskatchewan, showed strong opposition to the time change. In fact, 56 percent of survey respondents were 'strongly opposed' to the switch, 10 percent were 'somewhat opposed', 13 percent were 'somewhat support[ive]' and 14 percent 'strongly support[ive]'. The remaining seven percent had no opinion.
Reasons for supporting and opposing the time change varies greatly from the ability of the business sector to work on a national and global scale to the reduction of electrical consumption, and from the disruption of livestock feeding and milking schedules to a concern over which time zone the province would adopt.
Regardless of the reasons why people support and oppose the time change, the results of the poll will mean that Saskatchewan residents will not see a referendum this year. It means that Saskatchewan will continue to have CST all year-round. It means that Saskatchewan will remain the only province that does not change their clocks. It means that every night at 8:59 p.m., I will probably wish that we had just one more hour of sunlight. And lastly, it means that I will continue to question why we can't join the masses and change our clocks, especially given the last few months when we have learned how precious sunlight really is.
