[tz] Please include Montreal

[David Patte ₯]

To combine two recent topics, if you could get the Quebec government to 
pass a law delaying the time of switching back to daylight time this 
coming spring by just one second, then we could get Montreal's zone 
table back.

On a more serious vein, if you could find evidence that Montreal and 
Toronto's time zones since 1970 were at some time different, or that 
they implemented daylight saving differently at some point since 1970, 
that would provide the means for them to be separate zones in the tzdb. 
I made a vague attempt to find this evidence at one point, but never 
checked the Toronto Star or Montreal Gazette archives. There could be 
evidence there.

David
(a Montrealer in Ontario)


On 2017-11-11 20:33, Philip Paeps wrote:
> On 2017-11-11 23:31:28 (+0000), Sébastien Bouchard wrote:
>> It would be nice if Montreal was included in your database. There are 
>> smaller cities that are listed. I am using the latest Linux Mint Mate 
>> (18.2) and i had to choose Toronto to get into the right timezone. 
>> Montreal is not there.
>
> Please read http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~eggert/tz/theory.html#naming and 
> the archives of this mailing list for many (many!) previous 
> discussions about the names of timezones.
>
> Specifically: Montreal (like other parts of Quebec) has been in the 
> same time zone as Toronto since 1970.  If you need (often) correct 
> timestamps before 1970, you may be able to use the data in the 
> `backzone` file, though note the comment about correctness in there.
>
>> It doesn't matter much to me but there are some people here who will 
>> find it strange. Toronto is like... in another country. It's about 
>> History and the French people in Canada...
>
> The boundaries used in the tz database are the boundaries of time 
> zones since 1970.  While these boundaries are often in the same place 
> as political boundaries this is not always the case.
>
> Philip
>

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