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EDITORIAL: Lighter days ahead

This weekend we move our clocks back one hour to standard time. The immediate result will be more light earlier in the morning and less light in the afternoon/early evening.
Clock

This weekend we move our clocks back one hour to standard time. The immediate result will be more light earlier in the morning and less light in the afternoon/early evening.

But if the province follows through on its plans, it could be one of the last times for our twice-yearly ritual of “spring forward, fall back” clock gerrymandering.

When the province invited the public to weigh in on the issue this summer, an overwhelming number were in favour of keeping daylight time year round.

Convenient, since the province was likely planning that anyway, to ensure we stay in sync with similar changes being contemplated by western U.S. states.

That so many people felt strongly on this topic, however, is slightly perplexing. Fiddling with the clocks, after all, involves math, something most of us do not excel at. Some like to talk about daylight time giving us an “extra hour” of light, for instance. But much as we would like to believe otherwise, there are only so many hours of daylight in a 24-hour period.

The light you gain at the end of the day will come at the expense of light in the morning during winter hours – when kids would be walking to school before the sun comes up, for instance.

Apparently we’re crankier and have trouble sleeping and generally focussing around the time changes. But the same could be said for the day after the sugar high of Halloween, and we don’t see the province making moves to legislate that.

But, as sure as night follows day, we expect B.C. to fall in with the western states on whether we make the change permanent.

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