Quetico (and other places in NW Ontario)

[Chris Walton]

Jesper,

Just to clarify...
There are no errors in America/Winnipeg.
The rules are correct for the entire province of Manitoba including the city of Winnipeg.

The problem is that America/Winnipeg is not a perfect fit for the neighbouring communities in northwestern Ontario.

You asked what the difference between a "Kenora" time zone and the other time zones would be.
Assuming Kenora has been using DST since 1970 (which I don't have proof of) here is a summary of Winnipeg, Kenora, Rainy River, and Atikokan.

Winnipeg:
 1970-2005: CST/CDT with transitions at 2:00a.m. in spring and "3:00a.m." in fall.
 2006-2038: CST/CDT with transitions at 2:00a.m. both spring and fall.

Kenora:
 1970-2038: CST/CDT with transitions at 2:00a.m. both spring and fall.

Rainy River:
 1970-1973: CST year round
 1974-2038: CST/CDT with transitions at 2:00a.m. both spring and fall.

Atikokan:
 1970-2038: EST year round

#############

And to answer your question about the eastern limit of America/Rainy_River:
America/Rainy_River should "not" go as far east as 89.34°.

But before defining boundaries for America/Rainy_River, a decision needs on what to do with Kenora, Dryden, and the other communities west of 90°.
Do you wish to:
 a) include them in America/Winnipeg (ignoring the 2:00a.m. vs 3:00a.m. problem which existed up until 2005).
 b) include them in America/Rainy_River (ignoring the fact that America/Rainy_River has no DST for 1970-1973 and the fact that Kenora is bigger than Rainy_River).
 c) ask Paul to create a new time zone called America/Kenora


Ultimately America/Rainy_River could be defined as any of the following:
 a) the municipal boundaries of the towns of Rainy River and Fort Frances.
 b) the district of Rainy River minus Atikokan and Quetico.
 c) Ontario west of 90° minus Atikokan, Quetico, Upsala, & Shebandowan.


This a can of worms; officially another time zone is required but I was rather hoping we would not need to go there.
Canada already has 26 zones!
Is there any way to flag some of the old historical zones such that they don't appear when running "tzselect"?

Paul E.,
If you are reading, do you have any opinions on whether or not a new zone should be added?


One more thing to note:
The zone.tab file currently indicates that America/Rainy_River should be used for Rainy River and Fort Frances.
The town of Fort Frances has a population of 8315.
The town of Rainy River has a population of 981.
How come it was not called America/Fort_Frances?

##############

By they way...
I tried to run worldtimeexplorer.  I get a message "comctl32.ocx could not be found in C:\WINDOWS\system32".
Is there a quick fix for this?


-chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Jesper Norgaard Welen [mailto:jnorgard at prodigy.net.mx] 
Sent: November 5, 2006 3:20 PM
To: Chris Walton; TZ-list
Subject: RE: Quetico (and other places in NW Ontario)

Chris,

The map you sent of the Quetico park overview is more than sufficient for me to make a reasonable timezone. After all this is not rocket science, I'm intending to give an overview of the timezone for visual use, not for calculating if a specific latitude/longitude is inside the timezone or not.
I'm using an ESRI shapefile map, you can check it out from downloading World Time Explorer beta version from http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/wt20beta.zip and unzip and install it. I can give you a free full license if you want, so you can generate map colors for a specific date between 1850 and
today. Otherwise the shareware version will give you 30 days of playing around, and the colors should correspond until 2007, except for a possible (undecided) change in West Australia of course! And PS, I presume you have (access to) a Windows PC, otherwise it will not be of much use! Linux
die-hards, sorry!

I was wondering if my border between Rainy_River (on GMT-6) area and the rest of Ontario (on GMT-5) is wrong, supposedly it should divide around 90° while in reality it divides around -89.34. This is from another map source where I copied this border from, but perhaps for timezone use I should move
the border.

It would be nice if you could plot the points from Quetico park (100 points would be fine, perhaps even too much). I don't know if you have a possibility to output to an ESRI shapefile. If not, a collection of the pure latitude/longitudes would be fine (decimal please, not radix 60).

I will consider your comments about America/Winnipeg being one hour off each year, but it seems that even tz database is correct in this case? It looks like this:

# From Paul Eggert (2006-04-10):
# Shanks & Pottenger say Manitoba switched at 02:00 (not 02:00s) # starting 1966.  Since 02:00s is clearly correct for 1967 on, assume # it was also 02:00s in 1966.

...
Rule	Winn	1963	only	-	Sep	22	2:00	0	S
Rule	Winn	1966	1986	-	Apr	lastSun	2:00s	1:00	D
Rule	Winn	1966	2005	-	Oct	lastSun	2:00s	0	S
Rule	Winn	1987	2005	-	Apr	Sun>=1	2:00s	1:00	D
# Zone	NAME		GMTOFF	RULES	FORMAT	[UNTIL]
Zone America/Winnipeg	-6:28:36 -	LMT	1887 Jul 16
			-6:00	Winn	C%sT	2006
			-6:00	Canada	C%sT

Since 2:00s standard time means 3:00 local time when leaving DST, we're OK?

What would be the difference between the Kenora timezone and the others?

Regards,
- Jesper


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Walton [mailto:Chris.Walton at telus.com]
Sent: Domingo, 05 de Noviembre de 2006 1:24
To: jnorgard at prodigy.net.mx; tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov; Paul Eggert
Subject: Quetico (and other places in NW Ontario)


Jesper,

It looks like the entire MNR site is down.  It was working on Saturday
morning (Toronto time).  Hopefully it will come up soon! The maps on this
site are actually scanned copies of paper maps; the idea being that you can
view an image of the map before you fork out money for a paper copy.  The
resolution of the scanned images is terrible so the writing on the maps is
virtually impossible to read.

If you want a rough idea of the shape of the park have a peek at
http://www.queticofoundation.org/maps/park_map.gif


Let me know if you want me to generate a set of points or if you would
prefer to do it yourself; I don't mind either way. I figure that the area
could be roughly defined with about 100 points but to properly follow the
park boundary would take around 2000 points.

And now putting Quetico aside for a minute... you need to decide which zone
to use for the "other" areas in Ontario west of 90°.

According the TZ database, Fort Frances and Rainy River did not use daylight
saving until 1974; this is why there is a dedicated zone called
America/Rainy_River.  So Rainy River and Fort Frances should use
America/Rainy_River without question.

Presumably the rest of the region west of 90° has used CST/CDT since WWII.
According to the "zonetab" file, the region is supposed to use
America/Winnipeg.

America/Winnipeg results in incorrect times for one hour each year from 1966
through to 2005. This is because Manitoba "used" to change the clocks at
3:00a.m. every fall.  The practice stopped this year. Ontario has always
changed the clocks 2:00a.m.

America/Rainy_River gives correct times for the entire region from 1974
onwards.

Personally I think that America/Rainy_River is the better choice for the
entire region because it provides correct rules for the last 32 years.
Technically there should be another zone called America/Kenora but I doubt
anybody wants to bother creating it.

If it were up to me I would merge zones that have been the same for at least
25 years and create entries in the "backward" file for compatibility; but I
know this would be against the official rules!

-chris