CALGARY—Casey Langton has a date with 20 antique clocks first thing Sunday morning — again.

He’s the manager of Iron Crow Antiques and Objects of Intrigue in Calgary, and twice a year — literally, like clockwork — he or a member of his staff begins the tedious task of changing the time on each clock in the showroom. The fall change is particularly onerous, he explains, because the hands on old clocks don’t move backwards, and instead must be moved forward 11 hours, being sure to stop at each quarter, half, three quarter and hour mark to allow the clock to chime.

“When we fall back it’s very complicated,” Langton said. Despite this, he doesn’t think there should be any change to Alberta’s time keeping system, pointing out it’s been around since the First World War.

“I think we’re better for it,” he said.

But whether the province should stop changing the clock twice per year or not has been recently revived.

Saskatchewan has long been a Canadian outlier, staying on Central Standard Time no matter the season. This week B.C. moved to follow suit when Attorney General David Eby introduced legislation to pave the way for eliminating seasonal time changes. B.C. would stay on daylight time year round, under the legislation.

The move means Alberta could soon be the only western province still changing clocks. Its neighbours to the south, including places like Washington, Oregon and California are also trying to permanently change their clocks the same way as B.C.

So, some are asking: should Alberta follow suit?

Werner Antweiler, an economics professor with the University of British Columbia, said the argument is starting to gain steam, and not just in Canada.

“There is, I think, (a) renewed interest to look at this issue as other jurisdictions are ... moving toward year-round daylight saving time,” he said. “Even if you look across the ocean in the European Union, there’s a similar movement going on.”

To put it simply, ditching the time change would force us to pick between standard time, which Alberta does in the winter, and daylight saving time, which Alberta does in the summer. The purpose of daylight saving time, introduced in 1918 as a wartime energy-saving measure, was to maximize the number of hours that we see the sun while we are awake. It means the sun rises and sets later. That’s what B.C. wants to move to permanently.

If we did adopt permanent daylight time, as B.C. is debating, Calgary wouldn’t see the sun rise in the winter until around 9:30 a.m. It’d be worse farther north in communities such as Grande Prairie, where the sun wouldn’t come up until closer to 10:30.

The majority of Saskatchewan chose to observe central standard time year round, meaning it never has to change its clocks. On standard time, the sun rises earlier in the morning.

So if Alberta stayed on standard time, the summer would see earlier sunsets.

Cancelling seasonal time changes in Alberta has been on the table before, including in 2017 when the former NDP government proposed it, but the idea was ultimately scrapped.

Some businesses had raised concerns, Antweiler said. At the time, it would have put the province two hours ahead of B.C. during some parts of the year.

That concerned WestJet, Antweiler said, because the extra hour could have impeded the early morning flights.

Even if Alberta doesn’t change its own time, B.C.’s move would bring the two provinces more into sync.

“If anything, it brings us all closer rather than further away and that may not be a bad thing given all the other kind of concerns we had in the recent past,” Antweiler said.

That’s because B.C.’s proposed new Pacific Time will be the equivalent of Mountain Standard Time, so, if Alberta doesn’t make the switch, or shifts to permanent Standard Time, then in the summer, B.C. would still be one hour ahead. But in the winter, the provinces will be on the same time.

That time sync would be of no concern to WestJet, said Morgan Bell, a spokesperson for the airline.

Whether Alberta changes or not also wouldn’t make much of a difference to places such as Creston, B.C. The town goes by Alberta Standard Time and is in a unique position because it doesn’t change its clocks during the year.

Creston Mayor Ron Toyota says, in that sense, the town is already “ahead of the game, so to speak.”

Those lost in time

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On the other hand, if Alberta were to follow suit with B.C. and switch to permanent daylight-saving time, it would be helpful to places such as Lloydminster, which straddles the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, but operates on Mountain Time.

Many residents of Lloydminster, such as Cindy Trigg, have to contend with two time zones regularly during the winter — Mountain Standard Time and Central Standard Time. (Saskatchewan’s main time zone is the equivalent of Alberta’s spring and summer months, Mountain Daylight Time).

Trigg works for a company whose head office is based outside of the Mountain Time zone, meaning when a meeting is called, she has to double-check what time she needs to be there at.

“If there’s a meeting scheduled for 10 o’clock, (I) have to remember, OK, that’s 10 o’clock Saskatchewan time (which) is nine o’clock our time,” she said.

“You’ve got to adjust your travel accordingly.”

The current seasonal time changes also means there are fewer hours for Trigg to connect with head office during the winter, because of the difference in start and end times to the work day.

The health case for a change

From a health perspective, there’s a good case to stop switching back and forth, but it matters which way the clock is permanently switched.

Research by Michael Antle, a University of Calgary psychology professor, focuses on our circadian rhythm, which is the internal clock that regulates our sleep-wake cycles. Our circadian rhythm is often meant to line up with the time that the sun is out, but often conflicts with our social clock, which is the time we are expected to wake up, go to work and take on other responsibilities each day regardless of whether the sun is out.

Antle supports moving away from daylight saving time, pointing out documented increases of car crashes, workplace injuries and heart attacks in the days after our clocks move forward. But these problems aren’t noticed when our clocks move back, as they will this weekend.

“Those are all associated with the spring forward and all these things seem to go down in the fall,” Antle said, pointing out this is because when we roll the clocks back an hour, our responsibilities such as the timing of a typical workday or school-day, more closely lines up with when the sun goes up and comes down.

This creates a problem for Alberta with B.C.’s proposed change. Antle worries that if B.C. moves to permanent daylight time, which means continuously staying on the time we use when we move the clocks forward, Alberta would be pressured to do the same.

Antle argues it’d be better for Alberta’s societal health to use permanent standard time instead, that being continuously staying on the time we set our clocks back to each fall. Furthermore, what Antle would like to see is a national move to permanent standard time. He praised the United States’ system that has created a national pattern for where and when daylight saving time occurs, and requires congressional approval for any individual state to veer from this national use.

“It’s not going to affect just the people living in the province, it affects all the airlines flying in and out, all the shipments, all this stock trading. It’s probably going to happen, but it needs to be done in a coordinated, national fashion,” Antle said.

Correction - Nov. 4, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version to update an incorrect headline.

With files from Jenny Peng and Nadine Yousif.

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