America/Atikokan?

Chris Walton Chris.Walton at telus.com
Thu Jul 6 20:17:04 UTC 2006


Paul and others,

Can we consider adding a Canadian zone for the Ontario community of Atikokan?

There are several comments about Atikokan in the northamerica file but nobody has ever created a zone.

Based on the Ontario Time Act, Atikokan is supposed to use CST/CDT.
Atikokan does not follow the Time Act and instead remains on UTC-5 year round.

I could not find any "authoritative" web sites on the subject, however there are hundreds of web sites that mention the fact that Atikokan does not observe daylight time.
Some of the web sites correctly indicate that Atikokan stays on UTC-5 year-round.
Other sites incorrectly place Atikokan on UTC-6 and even UTC-7.


The Atikokan time practice is mentioned in the Canadian Geographic "Its's about TIME" article.
This article is already referenced in the Olson northamerica file.
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/Magazine/SO98/geomap.asp

There was an article published last year in Thunder Bay's "Chronicle Journal".
This article mentions Atikokan's use of Standard Time year-round and it contains a quote from
the mayor of Atikokan.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:6cIRPHfvxRgJ:www.chroniclejournal.com/story.shtml%3Fid%3D28155+atikokan+daylight+savings+time&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=23

There are several references on the web (including the articles above) which refer to Atikokan being on (or adopting) "Central Time" in the summer.
Here is another reference:
http://www.fftimes.com/print_version.php/22129

I came to the conclusion that Atikokan residents belive that their time zone changes twice a year as a result of ignoring daylight saving.
This would imply that Atikokan uses EST in the winter and CDT in the summer (both of which are the same as UTC-5).
Currently, Environment Canada (which seems to get the time zones correct for every other corner of Canada) is indeed using CDT for Atikokan.
http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/city/pages/on-148_metric_e.html.

I don't believe that the Olson database easily allows switching between CDT and EST without defining special rules for each year; I suppose we should simply create a zone that uses EST year-round; it would be better than not having any zone at all.



I believe Atikokan has been using UTC-5 since 1997 but I don't know what it did before that.
Are we allowed to assume that this practice has been observed since 1970?
Zone America/Atikokan     -6:06:30 -       LMT     1884
                          -6:00    Canada  C%sT    1970
                          -5:00    -       EST
# zone.tab entry:
CA +4845-9137  America/Atikokan Eastern Standard Time - Atikokan, Ontario


Supposedly Pickle Lake and Mishkeegogamang follow the same practice as Atikokan but I don't think they are significant enough to mention in the zone.tab file.

-chris



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