My fascination with timekeeping started when I moved to Kuala Lumpur at age 14. I found it fascinating that Malaysia’s day was night in London, Ont., where I grew up. In my Malaysian room, four alarm clocks I’d bought at a local night market showed different times between Canada, Malaysia and places in between that I hadn’t yet visited.
I also learned, though, that Malaysia doesn’t observe daylight saving time but instead sticks to standard time year-round. The practice of switching makes no sense there, given their equatorial days provide 12 hours of sunlight all year around. Sure, there’s the anomaly that Peninsula Malaysia is an hour ahead of mean solar time, keeping its clocks in lockstep with Sarawak and Sabah on Borneo Island. But that simply meant most days saw sunlight from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the sun at its apex at one instead of noon.
I’d grown up with daylight saving in Canada. When I returned for university, I found a certain ease and comfort in switching the clocks twice a year. The spring change was filled with anticipation. The darker mornings right after the switch felt like a prelude, signalling that glorious, sun-filled summer days were just ahead.
To be clear, though, I also feel comfort in the change in fall to standard time. It signalled Halloween was near (since between 1988 and 2016, we changed the time on the last Sunday of October) and the most wonderful time of the year was just around the corner. I have fond memories of admiring Christmas lights after being picked up from after-school programming.
Most of the “evidence” and conversation around daylight saving time has narrowly focused on confusion and impacts in the days immediately after the change. Very little attention has been paid to assessing the full ledger of pros and cons, where the short-term inconvenience translates into optimized daylight depending on what season we’re in.
At the latitudes that most Canadians live in, far from the tropics, we’re given eight-hour days in winter and 15-, 16-hour days in summer. The time change doesn’t just matter the second Sunday in March or the first Sunday in November, it makes a difference every single day as the year turns. Slicing and dicing through the change is what gives some Canadians 10 p.m. patio nights in June while also avoiding 10 a.m. sunrises in winter.
We forget that any way in which we reckon time has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Permanent standard time means that for the entire summer, not the one day, we’re sleeping through an extra hour of sunrise and losing an hour of outdoor activities in the evening.
Meanwhile, permanent saving time means that, in winter, children go to school in the dark. It’s been tried and abandoned not only in the United States in the 1970s, but also in Russia and other jurisdictions around the world.
Yet, British Columbia recently joined the Yukon and passed legislation making daylight saving time permanent.
As a public health physician, I find the moves unfortunate. After all, any assessment of health impacts also ought to consider the full slate of pros and cons associated with all three options – permanent daylight, permanent standard and the current practice – as well as the full slate of considerations beyond just the act of changing the clock.
With a full-spectrum lens, it soon becomes clear that of the three options, changing our clocks to match the season is the most optimal.
Consider the summer physical activity that can take place at a reasonable hour, before it gets way too hot and sticky.
Or the wellbeing that comes from an extra hour of daylight with family and friends in making the most of summer.
And what of the injuries prevented not only in the days around the change, but every single morning of our dark winters, by switching back to standard time?
Those are health benefits that are accrued every single day through different parts of our year. They vastly outweigh the inconvenience and limited acute impacts at the moments of change.
I can’t help but feel that like vaccines, the argument over time changes is related to societal trends.
In a society that chases convenience, changing one’s clock twice a year to optimize time to season can feel oppressive.
In a society of extremes, the idea of compromising to make the most of long summer days and revert to standard winters is anathema.
And in a world where policy making is increasingly based on hot takes of the moment rather than science, it just seems easier to capitulate and “lock the clock” when the grumbling comes round in March and November.
Truth is, if folks really want to lock the clock, it would just be easier to get rid of time zones and seasonal time changes altogether. When it comes to optimizing sunlight, we have two options: change our clocks, or change our hours, to reflect our sunset reality.
So, move to one global clock. It’s not a new idea. Then set out daily schedules according to that time. (A workday from 14h-22h in Toronto if we all agree to Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.) The hours then vary based on season. I’d probably keep summer hours myself, working from 13h-21h.
That said, frankly, it’s not daylight saving or “falling back” that people hate. It’s the cold, short days of winter. It’s the adjustment at the change. By June or January, we’ve all moved on. Like flying from Halifax to Toronto, our bodies adapt to the change, and we reap the benefits of the optimal time through the whole season.
Spring and summer moves between daylight and standard time represents a compromise. It optimizes time to available sunlight by season. It’s about health across the months, not just in the immediate moment of the change. When we look at the whole picture, it’s a practice that doesn’t make sense for the tropics but makes plenty of sense up here in Canada.
