[tz] Zone America/Glace_Bay

[Brian Inglis]

On 2015-07-18 10:52, Chris Walton wrote:
>> Hank W. wrote:
>>> The government of Glace Bay was dissolved on 1 Aug 1995 when eight
>>> municipalities, including Glace Bay, were consolidated to form Cape
>>> Breton (a.k.a. CBRM, short for Cape Breton Regional Municipality),
>>
>> Thanks for the info.  However, this all happened before America/Glace_Bay was
>> entered into the tz database in 1996, and even had we known about it we
>> probably wouldn't have been affected by it.
>>
>
> Paul E. wrote:
>> CBRM is a legal entity covering some 2500 km².  We typically prefer more-
>> specific location names, even if they lack some official or legal status.
>> To send physical mail there, one typically writes "Glace Bay, NS B1A 4X0" not
>> "Cape Breton Regional Municipality, NS B1A 4X0", which indicates that the Glace
>> Bay name is common usage and is a reasonable candidate for tzdata.
>
> I agree with Paul.
>
> The Wikipedia article says that Glace Bay was an incorporated town from 1901 to 1995.
> Now Glace Bay is a community within a larger municipality.   This does not imply that Glace Bay does not exist.
> Glace Bay is still marked on the maps.
> The road signs still say "Welcome to Glace Bay".
> As per Paul's comment above, all postal addresses for Glace Bay include the line: "Glace Bay, NS".
>
> The people that live in Glace Bay will tell you that they live in Glace Bay.
>
> The same is true for may former villages, towns, and cities in Canada.
> People that live in communities that have been amalgamated into larger municipalities never stop using the old names.
>
> The Canadian geonames database lists Glace Bay as a Community with coordinates 46° 11' 42" N, 59° 57' 21" W.

Nova Scotia province consists of the mainland peninsula (where Halifax sits),
Cape Breton Island (where Glace Bay sits on the time meridian, and includes
the island's former capital Sydney), and Sable Island (a marathon length
sandbar 160km offshore, and considered part of Halifax RM 300km away).

 From the historical weather station records available at:
https://weatherspark.com/history/28351/1971/Sydney-Nova-Scotia-Canada
Sydney shares the same time history as Glace Bay, so was
likely to be the same across the island, and the zone
records could be altered to read more accurately:
-CA	+4439-06336	America/Halifax	Atlantic Time - Nova Scotia (most places), PEI
+CA	+4439-06336	America/Halifax	Atlantic Time - Nova Scotia (peninsula), PEI
-CA	+4612-05957	America/Glace_Bay	Atlantic Time - Nova Scotia - places that did not observe DST 1966-1971
+CA	+4612-05957	America/Glace_Bay	Atlantic Time - Nova Scotia (Cape Breton) - no DST 1966-1971

Corrections welcome if anyone can dig up any more details for that period.

Sydney, as the capital and most populous location, or Cape Breton, would
have been better names for the zone had we known this in 1996.

The time kept by lighthouse keepers, lifeboatmen, meteorologists, Canadian
Coast Guard and Navy, Parks Canada, scientists, and filmmakers, who have
populated Sable Island continuously for the last couple of centuries by
the handful is left as an exercise for interested local researchers.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis