The Queen’s Speech

Twice a year, for more than a decade, now, I have addressed the nation.

Today, I do so again. At 6am it’s Ottawa, then I’m swiftly on to Thunder Bay at 6:10. My voice will echo through the kitchens of Saint John at 6:20 and rustle the lace curtains in the Anne of Green Gables parlours of Charlottetown at 6:40. Cape Breton, Moncton, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Regina, Prince George, Kelowna, Fredericton, Kitchener-Waterloo. And what that voice will be saying – what it has always been saying – is that daylight savings time is stupid. Again and again, to 14 separate cities, year after year.

And it’s been working. During the time I have been regularly interviewed on the CBC syndication desk about daylight savings, by dint of a professional focus on circadian rhythms, some questions have remained the same. We’ve talked about how the lost hour during our spring forward leads to population-level effects on heart attacks and traffic accidents. We’ve talked about its origins as a satirical proposal and the fact that its energy-saving theory has never panned out in practice.

But other questions have changed: questions of policy. Daylight savings is one of the few issues on which the nation agrees. We all hate it. Polls come back around the 90-something percent mark that we want to get rid of it. Last Word on Nothing alone has sported multiple blog posts from my colleagues bemoaning its effects.

One by one, the Canadian provinces have expressed an intention to ditch the bi-annual time change and adopt a clock that we just leave alone. You know, one that just stays put and tells time. Saskatchewan never went along with daylight savings time (the rumour was it disturbs the cows), but better late than never has been Yukon, and BC and Ontario have written a future move into legislation.

But they can’t pull the trigger yet. It’s all contingent on the states below us going first. As soon as the Americans get it done, we can automatically shift onto to a sane schedule without impacting our cross-border business harmony. (Shout out to my fellow agitators south of the border).

The thing is, daylight savings is nobody’s top priority. It’s on our minds for about 45 seconds, twice a year. So how much is it worth our while to save a brief, twice-yearly groan? I would argue the issue is more than it appears. It’s a question of whether we intend to live our lives chained to the accident of historically silly decisions—in this case, very much a ‘we’ve always done it this way’ attitude.

To remedy this mistake is to consciously choose our practices with intention. And that is making a statement whose ramifications could ripple through to much else. It would tell the world that we are people of reason.