B12 terrace Review — Wednesday, October 24, 1990 CDC hires occupational therapist — The Terrace Child Development Centre announced last week it has hired a new occupational therapist. Tracey Stephen-Loggia, a recent graduate from the University of Alberta and a long time resident of Kitimat, has begun working a 35- hour week with the Centre’s pre- school age clients. She joins the Centre staff that includes three speech therapists and a number of activity aides and early childhood education specialists, (Sy YOKOHAMA Fall back It’s that time of the year again. Sometime during the night between Saturday and Sunday we gain back that hour we lost in sleep last spring. Daylight _ Saving Time ends this weekend. Whose idea was it anyway to annually spring forward and fall back in time? And while on the subject of time — who invented the time zones we keep? Why is it 2:15 in Terrace and 3:15 in Edmonton and always "half an hour later in Newfoundland? s°§6Time travels “Today, most of us take time zones for eranted, ? wrote Thelma Landon in an issue of Canadian Geographic magazine, ‘‘just as we accept a round earth or sunrise and sunset. What a different story just a century ago, when time was front page news everywhere... The man behind the news was a Canadian — Sir Sanford — Fleming, who lived through the latter two thirds of the 19th cen- tury (he died in 1915). Inventor, engineer, writer and author of many scientific papers, designer,of Canada’s first postage stamp, diplomat, ex- — plorer, chancellor of Queen’s University, he was one of the founders of the Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Scientific Knowledge and publisher of the first large-scale x surveyors’ map in-Canada, also creator and promoter of the “LT 215/75R15 6P MAKE TRACKS TO... KAL@TIRE HURRY! Prices Expire Nov. 3rd- Our Price Includes Road Hazard Coverage We Sell Chains & Batteries Cedariand Tire Service Ltd. 4929 Keith Avenue Terrace, B.C. 635-6170 trans-Paciic submarine telegraph cable connecting North America (at Bamfield, B.C, on Vancouver Island) with Australia. And he was chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway. But of all his accomplishments, noted Horizon Canada, the best known is his invention of Standard Time. It is still almost universally used today. In 1871 Sir Sanford was appointed engineer of the proposed cross-Canada railway. The Canadian Encyclopedia described him as Canada’s foremost railway surveyor and construction engineer of the 19th century. In 1880, when the Canadian government turned the railway project over to a private syndicate, Sir Sanford retired from the CPR and turned his attention to other projects. One of those projects was developing a satisfactory world system of keeping time. ; Marking time Prior to the 1880's, time keeping was a local affair, varying from community to community. Local solar time, based on the sun’s daily position at noon, was the method used. With each community along a rail line using its own local solar time, com- plications developed with railroad time schedules. Horizon Canada explained the dilemma: ‘‘Traditionally, noon was designated as the time when the sun was directly overhead, and minutes were deducted as one travelled along. If it was noon in Toronto, it was 25 past in Montreal. However, things got com- plicated as voyages became longer.,. How could one be sure of . having the correct time at every stop along:the way?’’ One of the major problems encountered by Canadian travellers of that era was just how to keep proper time. The railway made obsolete the old system where every major centre set its clocks to local solar time, noted The Canadian Encyclopedia. Time after time How could rail connections be coordinated with a compatible method of time keeping? In 1878 Sir Sanford determined to do something about it. The development of the great railways and other technological breakthroughs during that period made it necessary to find a standard way of telling time, not only across our vast country but around the world as well. . Solar time itself could not be adopted as a standard because the length of a 24-hour day at different seasons of the year can differ by as much as 16 minutes. A standard, or average, solar time was needed — an average based | on the motion of a | hypothetical sun travelling at a a non- -varying rate throughout the year. Interested in developing a satisfactory and compatible world: system of time keeping, he developed the idea of standard mean time and standard time zones. His idea was to divide the earth in- to 24 time zones with hourly variations from zone to zone, pro- gressing around the globe. Each zone would cover 15 degrees of longitude and be marked from an internationally accepted reference meridian, Within each zone time would be the same, regardless of the sun’s position at noon (local solar time). The boundary between zones would mark the place where time would change — abruptly — by one hour. Within a few years all railways in North America were using Fleming’s system of time zones — Canada and the United States adopted standard time keeping on Nov. 18, 1883. A year later at the International Prime Meridian Conference held in . Washington, D.C. the system we use today was officially adop- ted, with Greenwich, England chosen as the mean meridian (the point where time begins its progression through all the other time zones). ‘Vet the Washington conference, grappling with issues so vital to Canada’s future,’’ observed Thelma Landon, ‘‘received very little attention from Canadian newspapers.”’ This may partly explain the strong negative reaction from the public to the adoption of standard time keeping. Fear and ignorance fostered predictions of ‘radical changes in clock design and in telling time. Anxious citizens penned emo- tional letters to newspapers about the disastrous consequences of messing about with time,.’’ Some objections came from religious groups, accusing Fleming of being a communist ‘‘and of pro- posing a system contrary to God’s will.”’ “By 1885,”’ Landon continued, ‘10,773 miles of rail spanned the couritry and linked many of Canada’s scattered settlements... Timed related problems were common all across Canada’s 90 degrees of longitude, where 44 hours of solar time and a multitude of local times separated communities on the Atlantic . coast from those on the Pacific.” Time marches on The late 1800’s were a time of unsettling change and growth. New ideas were challenged and resisted by some. Nevertheless — time marched on, . Today, Standard Time is taken for granted and used almost world-wide. However, unlike Sir Sanford’s original recommen- dation of equally divided zones, “‘in practice, time zone boun- daries now tend to conform to more convenient national or geographical divisions,”? The Canadian Encyclopedia noted, such as along the Rocky Mountains between B.C. and Alberta, ‘‘so that zones differ in size, shape and amount of change.’”’ New- foundland’s application of the time zone is based on half a meri- dian. That explains why the province’s time zone differs by half an hour from the other maritime provinces. Of North America’s seven time zones, Canada spans six of them: @ Pacific Standard Time (PST), eight hours (or time zones) from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), is used throughout most of B.C. and the Yukon Territory. @ Mountain Standard Time (MST), seven hours from GMT: and one hour ahead of us (if it’s 2:15 in Terrace it will be 3:15 in Ed- monton). This time zone includes parts of eastern B.C. and ex- tends from Alberta east to western Saskaichewan, It also includes part of the Northwest Territories. @ Central Standard Time (CST), six hours from GMT and two hours ahead of us (4:15 in Winnipeg), includes the central por- tion of the Northwest Territories, eastern and most of southern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the western portion of Ontario. @ Eastern Standard Time (EST), five hours from GMT and three hours ahead of us (5:15 at Cornwall, Ont.), takes in most of eastern Northwest Territories, - eastern Ontario, and western Quebec. @ Atlantic Standard Time (AST), four hours from GMT and _ four hours ahead of us (6:15 in Sydney, N.S.), extends from the far eastern Northwest Territories, far eastern part of Quebec, the coast of Labrador, and is used throughout New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. - @ Newfoundland Standard Time (NST), three and a half hours from GMT and four and a half hours ahead of us (6:45 in St. John’s), is also affectionately known as Newfie Time — it’s used - throughout the island. Fall back, spring forward The practice of daylight saving time has been encouraged since early in this century — but by whom [ could not discover. Since’ 1945 all provinces except Saskatchewan have alternated between ] ‘standard’ winters and ‘daylight’ summers, wrote Landon. ‘‘New- 1 foundland briefly experimented with double daylight-saving time f in 1988 but reverted to daylight: -saving -time in 1989 when the # concept proved unpopular.” Daylight saving time arrives each year just before April Fool’s I. Day and extends to the last Sunday i in October, which this year is 7 the 28th, : Enjoy that extra hour of sleep. cape eg ates Bd aca ae DADE CN Ena A ALi Ne CLE OS ose