By Anthony Biondi (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 21, 2012
We’re all acquainted with the old “spring forward, fall back” routine: the give and take of daylight savings time. To be honest, I don’t even remember what the real time is anymore. All I know is that when it comes to this wonderful day in spring, sometime in mid-March, I lose an hour of precious sleep.
As it so happened this year, it fell onto a day in which I was only getting six hours anyway. Let me say that I felt it. To most people this may not be a big deal, but I take my sleep very seriously. Don’t mess with me in the morning.
So when did this vicious cycle even begin? According to an article by CBC News, it started a hundred years back in a little land called Germany. They wanted to use the earlier rising sun to their advantage, so they would be awake during more daylight hours in the spring. This concept spread like a disease across countries and oceans, until half the world was infected. Now, in this day and age, we Canadians have to suffer oddly changing clock hours and a frustratingly short night in the spring.
I suppose it sounds fairly reasonable. It does, in some ways, save on energy consumed for lighting, but it’s still annoying. I, for one, would love to see it abolished, so that my clocks and schedules could continue unhindered year round. I wouldn’t have to be accidentally late for appointments or work those two days of the year. I never know when the clock is going to change; by some miracle I barely manage to keep up with its coming.
So you must imagine my fury when I learned that Saskatchewan, a province in our own country, has not recognized daylight savings in over 40 years.
They have not turned their clocks back or forward in so long that I bet they don’t even know what it would be like to suffer these days of fatigue and exhaustion due to sleep deprivation. I swear, the more I hear about Saskatchewan the more appealing it sounds. I would love for the rest of this country to follow suit and just abolish this silliness.
Sure, there are energy-saving benefits to having daylight savings in effect, but is it worth it? As far as I know, most households have tons of electrical thing-a-majigs running all day long anyway. An hour of a few lights won’t hurt that badly. It may be selfish of me to think this way just to keep myself asleep for an extra hour for one day of the year. But in all honesty, I really need the rest.
I propose an action here. Perhaps with the right petition or some such thing, we could shut down the whole process and just stick to the one time. Think of the motto: one time for one man to sleep in one night of the year. It would be glorious.
