Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915), a Scottish-Canadian engineer, is generally considered the originator of the time zone. His innovation was inspired after he missed a train due to a printed schedule which erroneously informed him his train was leaving in the AM, when in reality it left in the PM.
In 1876 Fleming proposed adopting a single worldwide clock, one based on 24 time zones, with each one being an hour (or 15 degrees of longitude) wide. Fleming’s plan was, with some modifications, put into motion after the International Meridian Conference of 1884 recommended the Greenwich Meridian as the international standard for zero degrees longitude.
I was 18 years old when I first left the Eastern Time Zone on a camping trip with three friends I’d just graduated from high school with. When we left the province of Quebec and crossed into Campbellton, New Brunswick, the clock jumped ahead, turning 60 whole minutes into vapor.
At day’s end it seemed the day had gone by unusually quickly, and indeed it had, since it had consisted of just 23 hours. Thankfully we recovered our lost 60 minutes the next day when we returned to the USA and Eastern Daylight Time.
My next departure from Eastern Time occurred four years later, but I don’t remember much about it. That was probably because I had crossed over the Mississippi River into Central Time by air, and was so excited about landing in Omaha, Nebraska after my first-ever plane trip that I didn’t take heed of the time change.
The vast majority of Earth’s denizens live their entire lives inside one specific time zone. India and China each have just one national time zone, and relatively few of either of those heavily-populated nation’s citizens ever travel internationally. The same goes for most residents of third world countries across the globe.
I’ve spent time in five different United States time zones, plus two more in Canada. In America the Central, Mountain, Pacific, and Alaska time zones are, in order, one, two, three, and four hours behind ours. I’ve also spent a total of almost three weeks in the Newfoundland Time Zone, which is 90 minutes ahead of Eastern Time. Don’t ask why; I’ve got limited space, and the explanation would take up far more than what remains of it.
There’s a reason for my current fascination with time zones: I’m filing this column from St. Andrews, New Brunswick, which is on Atlantic Time. If you’re reading this column at noon in Windham, know that it's 1 PM here, and also in Digby, Nova Scotia, where my companion and I are headed next. From there we’ll continue on to Peggy’s Cove, Prince Edward Island, the Hopewell Rocks, and the Canadian Chocolate Museum before returning home on what for us will be a 25-hour day.
Sleep patterns aren’t the only things a change of time zone impacts. It’s not easy putting together a weekly 600-word column under normal circumstances, but trying to convey thoughts eloquently in writing from a different time zone is particularly challenging. This essay doesn’t flow as smoothly as most of the previous columns I’ve produced for this newspaper have. This time zone change has me a little off my game.
But I can learn from experience.
The next time I have to file a column from the Atlantic Time Zone, I’ll just start writing it an hour earlier.
Unfortunately that particular epiphany may have come too late to save this week’s column, since time zone changes can affect both writers and readers.
In retrospect, you should have read this piece an hour from now.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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