Time to ditch Daylight
Savings Time, and move Maine to the Atlantic Time Zone
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| Marsh with running tide, Carol L. Douglas. These are my finished paintings from Parrsboro. |
Crossing into New Brunswick, the Mainer goes from the
Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic. There’s one more time zone to the east on
our continent, the little-known Newfoundland Time Zone, which is staggered on
the half-hour. This is followed only on Newfoundland, its offshore islands, and
the most southern parts of Labrador.
As weird as that is, it’s no weirder than the sprawling
Eastern time zone, which starts somewhere around Grande-Rivière, Quebec, and
runs to Ontonagon, Michigan. Sunrise in Grande-Rivière was at 4:17 AM this
morning. It was at 6:03 AM in Ontonagon. That’s an unwieldy span.
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| Headlands, Carol L. Douglas |
Our pre-clock ancestors marked the time of day by measuring
with a sundial, making noon whatever time the sun was directly overhead. They
weren’t worried that this was slightly different down the road. After all, if you walked from Winchester
to Canterbury, any difference in the time would be lost along the way.
Greenwich Mean Time was established to aid navigators to
determine longitude at sea. Nobody changed their clocks to match it; they just
carried on with solar time right up to the 19th century.
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| Breaking Dawn, Carol L. Douglas |
Enter the railroads. It was a bit difficult to set a
schedule when towns fifteen minutes apart by train used different time systems.
By the middle of the 19th century, British rail companies were using
Greenwich Mean Time and portable chronometers to standardize time keeping in
Britain, although it was a tough sell in places. British clocks from this
period sometimes had two minute hands, one for railroad time, and one for local
time. But by 1880, Greenwich Mean Time was the standard for Great Britain.
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| Low tide, Carol L. Douglas |
Here, time was confused in a uniquely American way. Every railroad
company had its own standard time, based on where it was headquartered. Its
schedules were printed in its own system, leaving the stationmaster at an
important junction with the unenviable task of translating several different train
lines’ timetables into local time. The solution was multiple clocks, one for
each railroad.
Standardization was reached on Sunday, November 18,
1883, known as “The Day of Two Noons,” when each railroad station clock was
reset as it reached the standard-time noon. The western limit of Eastern
Standard Time was my home town of Buffalo, NY. That’s more than 700 miles east
of the current western boundary.
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| Fox River School, Carol L. Douglas. |
Last fall, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued
a report recommending that their state ditch Eastern Standard Time “under
certain circumstances.” Effectively, it would get rid of Daylight Savings Time—hurrah—and
put Massachusetts on Atlantic Time year round.
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| My quick-draw of Parrsboro and its mudflats. |
I’m all for ditching Daylight Savings Time nationwide. It’s a
meaningless exercise that throws our internal clocks off twice a year. I’m
also in favor of switching Maine to Atlantic Time. The sun rises 25 minutes earlier in
Halifax than it does here. That puts our internal rhythms more in tune with the
Maritime provinces than with Michigan.
The problems of such a switch are overstated. If we can do business with Californians
and Australians, we can probably figure out the time difference with New York.
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| A kindly carpenter made teepees for Cathy LaChance and me. Only in Canada! |
It gets dark mighty early here in the winter—Boston’s
earliest nightfall is just 27 minutes later than in Anchorage. Since I live 185
miles north and east of Boston, it’s even worse here. Correspondingly, it gets
light awfully early in the summer as well.
Have mercy on us, legislators, and let us get some rest.
Just one more workshop this calendar year, but it's an awesome one! Sea and Sky at Schoodic, August 5-10. Be there or be square.
