DST in Canada through early 1916

Paul Eggert eggert at twinsun.com
Mon Jul 28 06:25:13 UTC 2003


Mark, the interesting news in your extracts from the Toronto Star is
that Port Arthur, Ontario (now part of Thunder Bay) was observing DST
in 1912.  This info isn't in the tz database now.

This led me to track down a copy of the 19th edition of William
Willett's pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" (dated March 1914).
Willett mentions Moose Jaw, and also mentions Port Arthur and Fort
William as observing DST two years before Moose Jaw did.  (See
ref. below.)

Since Moose Jaw observed DST in 1912 (according to the Toronto Star),
the Thunder Bay region must have observed it starting in 1910.  This
is a new record for the earliest recorded observance of
daylight-saving time.

Thanks very much for bringing this to my attention; I'll include a
new tz Rule (called "Thunder") in my next proposed update.

Unfortunately we don't know when the Thunder Bay region stopped
observing DST, or what DST rules they used.  For lack of better info,
I'll guess they observed DST through 1917 (since Canada had uniform
rules in 1918), and that they used Willett's proposal, namely third
Sunday in April at 02:00 to third Sunday in September at 03:00.

I imagine the only way to check this guess would be to consult the
newspapers printed near Thunder Bay at the time.  Probably the best
place to do that would be the Lakehead University Library.  If anyone
on the tz list can check that library I'd appreciate any news about
this.


Reference:
<http://www.pettswoodvillage.co.uk/Daylight_Savings_William_Willett.pdf>
I just love the Internet for this stuff!  Several years ago, I
couldn't find a copy of this pamphlet in the University of California
research libraries; now it's on the net in PDF form.



More information about the tz mailing list