It
is NOT time for a change
by
Robert LaFrance
This spring the time change went all
right here, not like last year when I was late for a job interview with the
prime minister.
Just kidding about the job
interview, but last year was a bucketful of havoc and chaos. Certain family
members were late for church, my dog’s appointment with the vet was early and I
had to wait two hours, and I pretty much ruined my cars’ main computer systems
as I changed their clock’s time.
On Google, I found that a guy named
Sanford Fleming, though blamed by many for being the father of the particular
brainchild known as Daylight Savings Time, is not guilty although he did invent
worldwide standard time in 1879 and received a knighthood in 1897 from Queen
Victoria.
Who came up with the idea of ‘spring ahead, fall
back’ anyway? I found that DST itself
came to Canada about a century ago. Earlier this month, when we were about to
set all our clocks ahead, I was ready. Remembering last year’s catastrophe, I
began at supper time on Saturday, March 10, to change all the clocks inside and
outside our house. It was, as they say, a daunting task that took me until 1:45
am.
(It’s not only ‘they’ who say it was
a daunting task; I say it too.)
I began with the easy one, the
microwave clock. I just had to press the button marked ‘clock’ then put in the
time, then press ‘clock’ again. Nothing to that; I only had 47 clocks left to
change. My wife said: “Are you sure it’s this weekend and not next weekend?”
She was ‘pulling my chain’. I continued on my quest to change those other 46
clocks.
Many years ago I learned that some
clocks strenuously object when you manually change their time backward, but I
forgot. This Spring shouldn’t have been a problem because the time was going
ahead and not back, unless I really messed things up.
I did. I’m not sure what I was thinking about
(probably nothing), but I tried to turn BACK the time on our big grandfather
clock in the hall and heard all sorts of objections from inside when I took my
finger and tried to move the minute hand backward past the Roman numerals XII
at the top.
That problem eventually straightened
out, I moved on to my office computer and sprang it ahead one hour, forgetting
that modern technology doesn’t like human interference. The next morning I
found that my computer, my two laptops and my wife’s computer had all
automatically moved ahead an hour, thanks to the Internet taking care of its
own. So I had to turn all those back an hour.
Even so, I hadn’t encountered any
serious problems like the ones last year, but it was still a tiresome exercise
for anyone as lazy as I am. Once I got out of the downstairs hall and over the
grandfather clock miscue, I still had over 40 clocks to move ahead. Everywhere
I looked there was a clock or a watch to change. I was getting exhausted.
The clocks in the two cars seemed to
be no problem. I found the manuals for the 2017 Corolla and the 2009 Yaris
(don’t tell Red Green I used a manual) and it was a cinch – until the next
morning when I learned that the Corolla, but not the Yaris, had automatically
moved its clock ahead an hour. The Yaris, bought in Newfoundland, had moved its
clock ahead only half an hour.
(That was humour, inserted into this
column to ease the tension.)
One thing I have prided myself on
over the years is having my wristwatch show the precise time. Twice every year,
once I deal with this ‘spring ahead, fall back’ nonsense, I set my watch using
the atomic clock which is located deep in a Colorado mountain. This is part of a project administered by the U.S. and
Canada as part of our mutual respect and cooperation, notwithstanding the
occasional softwood lumber, steel and aluminum tariffs, and is called
Coordinated Universal Time. It’s supposed to take its cue from the rotation of
the earth along with the sun’s position. It’s accurate to within a second, I
think.
Hey, don’t expect me to know what
I’m talking about; do I look like a rocket scientist?
The point of all this blithering is
that I finally got all clocks changed to their proper times, although I may
someday decide to use my late father’s and Nancy Reagan’s approach - just say
no. Saskatchewan keeps the same time all year. I’m thinking about it; now if I
could just persuade my computers and cars that this is a good idea.-end-
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