CANADA TIME ZONES
Canada uses six primary time zones. From east to west they are
Newfoundland Time Zone, Atlantic Time Zone, Eastern Time, Central
Time Zone, Mountain Time Zone, and the Pacific Time Zone.
Daylight Saving Time begins at 2:00 a.m. local time on the first Sunday
in April. On the last Sunday in October area on Daylight Saving Time fall
back to Standard Time at 2:00 a.m. The names in each time zone change
along with Daylight Saving Time. Eastern Standard Time (EST) becomes
Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), and so forth. Some areas of Canada not
using Daylight Saving Time include, Fort St. John and Dawson Creek in
British Columbia, Creston in the East Kootenays, most of Saskatchewan
(except Denare Beach and Creighton) and Atilokan in Ontario.
GMT is the code for (Greenwich Mean Time) also called UTC =
Coordinated Universal Time. The (-9h) in Alaskan Standard Time refers to
that time zone being nine hours behind UTC or GMT and so forth for the
other Time Zones.
In Canada, Time Zones and Daylight Saving Time usually have been
regulated by provincial and territorial governments.
Clocks are turned forward by one hour on the first Sunday in April and
turned back on the last Sunday of October. Time Zones have been like
this since 1988.
From east to west, Canada is
neatly divided into six time zones
Earth is divided into 24 time zones (for the sticklers out there, I
know there are really 28, but the extra 4 are unusual). As you move
westward, each time zone you enter is one hour earlier than the time
zone you are leaving (until you get to the International Date Line, but
that's another story). As an example, if you were driving west through
the state of Kansas in the Central Standard Time zone of the United
States and you were about to enter the state of Colorado in the
Mountain Standard Time zone you would have to set your watch back
one hour. So, if your watch said 3:30 p.m., you would need to change
it to 2:30 p.m. Because of these time zones the rotation of the Earth
allows some sky phenomena to occur at essentially the same time (+/30 minutes) no matter where you are on the planet. This basically
includes the times of when certain constellations will rise above your
horizon.
Here is another example. Time zones span quite a large distance
and there is a reason why I noted above that the times are essentially
accurate to within +/- 30 minutes. Let's say you are on the eastern
border of the Central Standard Time zone. Sunrise occurs at 5:00 a.m.
For people further west, however, the sun has not risen yet. Why?
Because Earth is round and sunlight does not curve around Earth's
limb. The Earth continues to rotate and in the middle of the Central
Standard Time zone the sun will rise at 5:30 a.m. More rotation and
then the western edge of the Central Standard Time zone sees the sun
rise at 6:00 a.m. You can see here that, if this were to continue,
sunrise would occur at noon over the Pacific Ocean and at 6:00 p.m.
for people in Asia, but this does not really happen because of the time
zones. If you were standing on the western edge of the Central
Standard Time zone and walked or drove westward into the Mountain
Standard Time zone, you would have to set your watch back one hour.
So now a person standing on the eastern edge of the Mountain
Standard Time zone sees the sunrise at 5:00 a.m. The cycle
essentially repeats through every time zone.
So, whenever you see the term "local time" on this web site this
basically means your time.
Time zones
Whether you're travelling east or heading out west, working out the
time differences can be a bit confusing.
Here's our simple guide to knowing the time on your travels.
The earth is divided into 24 time zones, each of which is about 15°
wide. Each time zone is one hour different to the next. Within each
zone all clocks are set to the same time. This is the case all over the
world; there are very few exceptions such as South Australia, where
there are half-hour zones.
The middle line, or meridian, is located in Greenwich in London. All
time zones are based around Greenwich Mean Time. Each time zone
to the west of Greenwich is on an earlier time zone; whilst those to the
east of Greenwich is on a later time.
Here are two examples:


Berlin is located one time zone east of London so is one hour
ahead of GMT. When it is midday in London its 1pm in Berlin.
Los Angeles is 8 time zones west from Britain, so is eight
hours behind GMT. When it is midday in London its 4am in Los
Angeles.
Directly around the globe from Greenwich is the International Date
Line, this is where the time zones meet. The Date Line is twelve time
zones to the east of Greenwich and 12 time zones to the west.
Therefore instead of there being a one hour time difference, there is a
24 hour time difference. Travellers who cross this line do not need
to change their watch, but they need to change the date.
There is one more added confusion for the traveller: Daylight Saving
Time (also referred to as DST or Summer Time). Daylight Saving Time
is used in many locations around the world as a time adjustment to
local clocks, hoping to take greater advantage of available natural light
during the summer months.
Clocks change forwards in Spring, early on a Sunday morning at the
end of March and change backwards early on a Sunday morning at the
end of October. Travellers changing time zones need to be sure that
they have incorporated DST.
It's worth noting that the duration of British Summer Time (BST) can
be varied though by Order of Council and in recent years has been
changed so as to bring the start of Summer Time into line with that
used in Europe, and in 2002 an order was made to link UK summer
time to Europe permanently.
Here's an easy phrase that may help you remember:
'Spring Forward, Fall Back'!
The Earth is divided into 24 time zones so that everyone in the world
can be on roughly similar schedules (like noon being roughly when the
sun is highest in the sky). The idea to divide the Earth into time zones
was proposed by the Canadian railway planner and engineer Sir
Sandford Fleming (1827 - 1915) in the late 1870s.
Time zones were first used in 1883 by railroads in order to standardize
their schedules. World time zones were determined in 1884, at an
international conference in Washington, D.C. Each of the 24 world time
zones are about 15 degrees wide and differ by one hour.
Early Time Keeping:
Until about 100 years ago, each city set its clocks to local time -noon was the time when the Sun was at its highest in the sky, as
viewed from that city. Even neighboring cities needed to set their
clocks differently to make this happen. For example, when it was 8:00
in New York City, it was 8:12 in Boston (because Boston is about 3
degrees east of New York). Before modern transportation and
communication, this difference didn't really matter.
A Need for Synchronized Schedules:
Once railroads were built, this became very awkward. Train schedules
needed to be written using common time settings that everybody
agreed to, so the U.S. railroad companies adopted the idea of time
zones. This was soon extended internationally, with the world being
divided into 24 time zones, each one a long strip from North Pole to
South Pole, about 15 degrees of longitude wide. All the people in one
time zone would set their clock the same way (to the local time in the
center of the time zone).
24 Hours in a Day and 24 Time Zones:
Since there are 24 hours in a day, dividing the Earth into 24 time
zones meant that everybody was using a time setting very close to
their local time -- there's at most about a half-hour difference. So 7:00
am was still in the morning, 12 noon was still in the middle of the day,
and 7:00 pm was still in the evening.
But this was much more convenient than the older system of using
local time. Most neighboring cities use the same time zone settings.
Even if two cities are in different time zones, the time settings always
differ by a whole number of hours (1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, etc.),
making it easy to convert from the time in one time zone to the time
in the other.
Today, most countries use this time zone system. (In a few places,
clocks are set to be 15 minutes or 30 minutes different from the time
according to the standardized time zone system.)
The International Date Line:
The prime meridian (zero-degrees longitude) passes through
Greenwich, England. Halfway around the world in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean (180 degrees from Greenwich) is the International Date
Line (IDL), where the date changes across the boundary of the time
zone. The entire world is on the same date only at the instant when it
is noon in Greenwich, England, and midnight at the IDL. At all other
times, there are different dates on each side of the IDL.
1. When you are sitting in math class each day do you ever wonder
what your online friends across the sea are doing? Do you think
they are in school, too, hoping they got the right answer on a
math test?
To help you understand how to find out what other kids are
doing at the same moment you are doing things we have made a
chart.