As summer fades and evenings grow shorter across Ontario, residents are preparing for the seasonal ritual of rolling back the clocks. This year, daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 2, when clocks are set back one hour, giving everyone a little extra sleep as the province returns to standard time. The date, falling on the first Sunday of November, is among the earliest possible for the switch back.
But while the ritual is familiar, the debate about its future continues. Ontario passed a law in 2020 to stop observing daylight saving time, but the move has been tied to Quebec and New York state adopting the same change. Without alignment from those jurisdictions, the practice remains in place. Last year, Quebec held public consultations on the matter, but no commitment has been made to end the practice. A change.org petition has also gathered more than 89,000 signatures urging Canadian leaders, including Ontario Premier Doug Ford, to end the twice-a-year clock changes and move to a permanent standard time.
Not all of Canada follows daylight saving time. Saskatchewan and Yukon do not observe it, while certain communities in northwestern Ontario and other provinces have also opted out. Globally, fewer than 40 per cent of countries still use daylight saving time, down from more than 140 nations at its peak. Even among those that do, the start and end dates vary, though Canada aligns its schedule with the United States.
The practice has deep roots in history. Canada first introduced daylight saving time in 1918 during the First World War to conserve energy. The idea, borrowed from Germany, was that advancing clocks in the spring extended daylight hours during work periods, reducing the need for artificial lighting and conserving fuel. Though the practice was abandoned after the war, it returned during the Second World War and has continued in most provinces since. Interestingly, the first Canadian community to experiment with daylight saving time was Port Arthur—now part of Thunder Bay—in 1908, when clocks were moved forward on July 1 and back again on September 1 of that year.
More than a century later, the seasonal adjustment remains both a habit and a controversy. As Ontarians prepare to set their clocks back this fall, the debate over whether the practice should continue—or be left in history—remains unresolved.