Sunday, October 25/2025

October 26/25 16:00

Daylight savings time in Cyprus, North and South, ended in the wee small hours of this morning, as it did in most of Europe. And twice a year I lament the inability of two sides of the Atlantic to agree on a date for the change. Can’t be a substantive problem as they’re only a week apart. Must be more like why should we change - why not you. Doesn’t really give one much hope for negotiations on more serious matters like world peace.

Easier to understand why whole countries adopt one time zone regardless of the number of degrees of longitude. Think Türkiye, for instance. Or more strikingly China, a huge country where everyone is on Beijing time - very convenient for the capital. And why some countries opt against seasonal change. After all you get the same number of hours of daylight regardless. 

As Saskatchewan has sensibly realised. Although Saskatchewan is an interesting case. Germany is often cited as being the first country to adopt daylight savings in 1916 as a war measure. But nearly eight years before that, on July 1, 1908, Port Arthur Ontario became the first municipality in the world to declare daylight savings time. The second Canadian city to do this was Regina, Saskatchewan, on April 23, 1914. Saskatchewan as a pioneer of daylight savings? It’s the province that never moves to daylight savings. Well, sort of. Geographically Saskatchewan falls under Mountain Time, so it could be said to be permanently on Mountain Daylight Savings. (And yes, I do understand that Saskatchewan is more complicated than that!)

And speaking of mountains, the effect of daylight savings is fairly dramatic here as we live on the side of a mountain. In theory sunset in Lapta today should be 16:59, and maybe at sea level it is, But at 16:00 the sun disappears behind the mountain, an hour earlier than yesterday.