Yesterday, we talked about the origins of Creston’s wacky time zone (which might not be wacky any longer, given the recent provincial referendum to do away with Daylight Saving Time). It’s about time the rest of the province followed our example, I say. After all, Creston’s time zone was never a problem until other jurisdictions started messing with the clocks!
We left off yesterday with the 1952 referendum, when BC adopted DST and Creston didn’t. Here’s the exciting conclusion:
In 1971, Alberta adopted DST, and things got a little complicated for the communities on Mountain Time. Now, for the first time, those communities were out of sync with Calgary for part of the year, and now, also for the first time, we start to see a bit of a debate on the topic in the newspapers – but only a bit of one. Town Council considered holding a referendum with the municipal elections in December 1971, but nothing happened until August 1972. In conjunction with the provincial elections, a referendum was held for the four and half electoral districts that were on Mountain Time – two in the Peace River district, two in the East Kootenay, and the Creston part of Nelson-Creston. The question was asked, “Are you in favour of Pacific Standard time, including Pacific Daylight Saving time, as it is applicable now throughout the province?” The Creston Valley Advance made a point of clarifying that the results would not be binding; the poll was simply to gather information.
Ironically, Creston was not at first to be even included in the referendum, which meant that it would have stayed on Mountain Time regardless of the results of the vote in the East Kootenay. Even when the poll boundaries were extended, the limit was right down the centre of the Kootenay River, so West Creston didn’t get to vote on the issue at all. Had it passed, West Creston would have been on Mountain Time, while Creston went to Pacific.
That would have been fun, too.
For the first time, we see letters to the editor on the subject – arguments over where exactly the dividing line between Pacific and Mountain Time is or should be; assertions that Creston should be doing the same thing as the rest of the East Kootenay; one letter from Boswell castigating the “selfish adults” who simply want to “play golf” in the evenings even though it means children are going to school in the dark.
As it turned out, “The special plebiscite on whether electors east of Kootenay Lake and Kootenay River preferred Pacific Time resulted in an exact tie. The question was simply “yes” or “no” and 1,734 electors were in favour and 1,734 were against. Where this leaves the question is anyone’s guess.”
These results were published in the Creston Valley Advance. The Creston Review simply said that the vote was for remaining on Mountain Standard Time. Wikipedia.com gives the final count at 1,947 No, 1,900 Yes; another website gave it as 1,455 No and 1,404 Yes. Either way, it was a close-run thing and was taken as a “No” overall.
The upshot is that all of the affected districts voted against DST, so things went on pretty much the same as they had done (again). The only change was that the East Kootenays adopted DST as it applied to Mountain Time. Those communities were now on the same time as Calgary year-round, and only the Creston Valley remained out of sync with its neighbours.
In 1979, the Creston Valley Advance conducted an informal poll, asking residents three questions: “Are you in favour of changing time? If a change were imposed, would you rather be in time with Nelson or Cranbrook? Which government agency should look after the responsibility of a poll on the question?”
59% said Creston should stay the same; only 41% wanted to change. If the time changed, 61% wanted to be in time with Cranbrook; only 39% wanted to be in line with Nelson. Once again, we see a debate on the issue. Here are some of the comments, as published in the Creston Valley Advance:
- “It is just new people that come here and think we are on MST that agitate to have the time changed.”
- “Creston is the only place on proper time. Leave it alone.”
- “I don’t remember changing time for the 36 years I’ve been here. Why change now?”
- “Who the hell changed the time in the first place? Put it back on standard time, which would be Pacific time.”
- If business people want more free daylight time, open doors an hour earlier and close an hour earlier, but leave the clock alone. The old Indian cut one end off his blanket and sewed it on the other to make it longer.”
- “If we changed our children would be coming home in the dark.”
- “I’m tired of every year having this question shoved down our throats. Haven’t we made it clear in the past?”
- “ ‘Creston time’ has allowed our children to have an hour or so of daylight after school during the winter months. Salmo and Nelson, in the west, find that Pacific Time does not allow children any appreciable amount of time for child-play after school. Creston bus pupils walk home from their bus stops in daylight – the same does not exist for Nelson/Salmo children.”
- “BC should be all on Pacific time. Why is a small portion on another time? We live in BC, then be BC. If Alberta time is better, then let people move there. Let’s all support the School Board and go Pacific time. However, daylight saving is a different thing.”
- “Look to the east – Cranbrook is nearer; the highway to Cranbrook is seldom, if ever, closed; it has no ferry delays and it would assure our children of daylight play and walk home time.”
Since then, there have been at least three efforts to have a referendum on the subject – I found references to groups of people pushing for such a referendum in 1993, 1998, and 2005. These efforts were abandoned for one of two reasons. One, referendums require a single, yes-or-no question, and, with three options available, nobody has been able to figure out how to word it. Two, nobody could figure out who was responsible for the referendum.
I’ve talked to quite a few people while investigating this topic, and I keep hearing about something big that happened in the early 1980s, possibly about 1982-1984. From the vague recollections I’ve gathered, it looks like the push came from the Chamber of Commerce, the highways department may have been involved – something to do with moving the time zone sign – and Creston and surrounding communities flatly refused to accept a change to the time zone; highways, I understand, was told that they would simply have to move the sign. Apparently, people along the East Shore were up in arms at the Creston Valley’s obstinacy. But the newspapers don’t shed any light on this event – I found only two letters to the editor on the subject in the twelve years between 1980 and 1992. Not exactly a huge kerfuffle.
So that’s the “how” and the “when” we got to where we are. The “why” is a little more obscure, because no reasons are actually given in the local papers until 1971 and by then the situation had already been in effect for more than half a century. Here are my conclusions; feel free to draw your own:
Creston changed to DST the first time in the summer of 1918 in order to follow the CPR’s lead. This made sense, because the train was, quite literally, the heartbeat of the community. People left and arrived, mail and supplies came in, local products went out, all according to the CPR schedule.
This doesn’t, however, explain why Creston didn’t change back that fall, and here I can only speculate. Little tidbits of news in the local papers suggest that ties to the east were much stronger than those to the west. Westbound trains were “going through to Kootenay Landing” (at the south end of Kootenay Lake) but not beyond; the road to Cranbrook was opened much earlier than any roads to Nelson and there were no ferries to contend with when travelling to the east; mail came in from the east; the Valley’s fruit lands were marketed to the east far more than to the west; local fruit was shipped to the east. I believe that first switch to Pacific time, in 1916, disrupted this very natural and logical connection, and the 1918 implementation of DST restored it.
As time went on, and more and more people had their own vehicles, the influence of the CPR’s schedule on day-to-day life decreased. Once the time connection had been re-established with the East, there was simply no real reason to change it.
One reason often given for Creston’s odd little time zone goes like this: “It’s because of all the dairy farmers who came to the Creston Valley during the Depression years. They didn’t have to change clocks in Saskatchewan, and had to get up to milk their cows no matter what time the clocks said, and semi-annual changes to the time would play havoc with their delivery schedules. So they refuse to adopt DST.”
That may be a reason why changing the time zone is resisted now, even though none of the discussions in the newspapers say anything about dairy farmers. But it’s not the reason we got our odd little time zone in the first place. Creston’s time zone predates the Depression by a good decade, and Saskatchewan’s rejection of DST didn’t happen until 1966, so we can’t blame it on the relocated Saskatchewan dairy farmers.
Nevertheless, farming interests no doubt did have considerable influence on the fact that Creston did not change back to Pacific Standard Time in October 1918, and got the whole thing started. On April 19, 1918, just after the first war-time DST was implemented, the Review reported, “Alice Siding clocks were not affected by the daylight savings regulations. Just now very little daylight is going to waste so what’s the odds whether the clocks are moved or not.” Alice Siding was very much an agricultural community, and farmers didn’t work according to the clock — they worked from sun-up to sundown. Even though the other communities in the Valley didn’t report in on DST – then or since – it’s safe to say that many of their residents felt much the same way.