Spring forward...Sooner

Daylight Saving Time in Canada - changes for 2007

Starting in March 2007, the standard North American period for Daylight Saving Time is to be from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November.
Provinces and territories will replace their previous practice (from 1987 to 2006, DST was from the first Sunday of April to the last Sunday in October).
Daylight time was first enacted in Germany in 1915, quickly followed by Britain and much of Europe and Canada.
Because the sun shone for a time while most people were asleep, it was reasoned that light could be better used during the day. The solution was to push the clocks ahead one hour in springtime, forcing people to wake an hour earlier. They would therefore expend less energy trying to light their homes, for instance, if time were adjusted to suit their daily patterns.
When the days started getting shorter in the fall and people awoke to increasing darkness, the clocks were turned back an hour to get more light in the morning.
Although first instituted in 1915, the idea of daylight time had been batted around for more than a century. Benjamin Franklin suggested the idea more than once in the 1770s while he was a minister to France. But it wasn't until more than a century later that the idea of daylight time was taken seriously.
William Willett, an English writer revived the idea in 1907, and eight years later Germany was the first nation to adopt daylight time. The reason: energy conservation. Britain quickly followed suit and instituted British Summer Time in 1916.
Several areas, including parts of Europe, Canada and the U.S., followed suit during the First World War. In most cases daylight time ended with the armistice.
During the Second World War, a different form of daylight time was reinstated by Britain and clocks were set two hours ahead of GMT during the summer. It was known as Double Summer Time. The time shift didn't end with the summer, as clocks were rolled back to be one hour ahead of GMT through the winter.
The Uniform Time Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1966, established a system of uniform (within each time zone) daylight time throughout most of the U.S. and its possessions, exempting only those states in which the legislatures voted to keep the entire state on standard time.
In Canada it's up to each province to decide whether to use daylight time, and not all do. As of 2006, with a few exceptions, most jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S. have been moving their clocks ahead by one hour on the first Sunday of April, and then back an hour on the last Sunday of October.
Nunavut, with the exception of Southampton Island, which does not observe daylight time, will continue to change its clocks in April and October unless the territory changes its laws.
Most of Saskatchewan has not observed daylight time since 1966 and stays on Central Standard Time all year round. Some border towns follow the time schemes of their neighbours in Manitoba or Alberta.
Daylight time is observed in most of the United States, with the exceptions of part of Arizona and part of Indiana. Much of Africa does not observe it, nor does China, Japan, the Indian subcontinent or Indonesia.
Some parts of Australia have adopted daylight time. Of course, it's done a little differently than in the Northern Hemisphere where seasons are opposite.
This new schedule was introduced to try to help save energy, since people aren't expected to need their lights on as early in the evening. But there is still some debate about how effective the change will be at reducing energy consumption.
(files from CBC)