Weighing in on the DST Debate

I was in Quebec a week or so ago when North America moved to Daylight Savings Time. In fact it was when most of the world moved to Daylight Savings Time, most of the world except for where I normally hang my hat – Saskatchewan.

Here in the, easy to draw hard to spell province, DST, or lack of compliance to the doctrine, is a big issue. Nothing will get some old codger quite so riled up as the thought of moving clocks forward, or back an hour, in the spring and fall.

When the Saskatchewan Party, defeated the New Democrats – not exactly a bunch which embrace a new idea themselves - they said the people should decide, and promised a referendum on the issue. Last week I was wondering what happened to that vote?

It seems that the Junior Minister of Time, Darryl Hickey decided that most people in the province don’t want DST so he decided to scrap the idea of a vote on the issue. Hickey is the intellectually challenged minister from Prince Albert who ran in the last election on a platform of “A vote for Darryl Hickey is a vote to keep the mill open” all this when his own party’s platform was to let the Prince Albert mill die. One of the Saskatchewan Party’s first acts after getting elected was to scrap the deal the NDP had made to try and re-open the mill. Perhaps the fact he got elected says more about the intelligence of Prince Albert voters than it says about Hickey’s ethics.

In any case, had known Hickey was in charge I would have given up all hope we’d spring forward long ago.

I will admit though, it is a divisive issue here on the flatland. The opposition mainly comes from people who have the flexibility to control when they do what, unencumbered by set work scheduled, older rural folks. They used to argue that all this change would confuse the farm animals feeding schedule. I never quite figured that one out.

Now the luddite’s rallying cry seems to be “We are already on Daylight Savings Time. No need to change”.

I for one miss being able to comfortably sit outside long into the evening. It gets cool here on the prairies once the sun goes down. Believe me when you spend what seems like half your life in the deep freeze, you want to savour every minute of a warm sunny evening.

And then let’s not forget the mornings. Without shifting the clocks sunrise comes pretty early. That is fine, who doesn’t like a long day but when the birds start their raucous chatter on the trees just outside my bedroom window at about 4:30, I’d like just a bit more sleep.