While most Ontarians will turn their clocks this weekend, others won’t have to “fall back” an hour.
Daylight saving time (DST) is permanent in Kenora and throughout northwestern Ontario, but for the rest of the province, clocks will fall back one hour at 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1. DST spans from March to November, when the time is an hour ahead of the standard time observed in the fall and winter months.
This region of Ontario is making the change to stay aligned with Manitoba, which announced in September that it would no longer move back to standard time. The province said it consulted Indigenous leaders and the communities throughout northwestern Ontario.
The City of Kenora indicated overwhelming support to scrap the time changing practice, pointing to a survey where more than 93 per cent of respondents voted to keep daylight time permanent. That survey received 5,261 responses.
“By keeping this part of the province aligned with Manitoba, our government is taking a practical, common-sense approach to avoid unnecessary disruptions and ensure economic stability in communities that reside in Ontario’s central time zone,” Attorney General Doug Downey said in a news release issued mid-October.
Why isn’t the whole province ending DST?
While every part of Ontario west of the 90th meridian, a north-south longitudinal line crossing the province, will no longer change their clocks, communities east of it will continue to do so twice a year.
“There’s always been a special exemption for this northwest corner of Ontario,” Patricia Lakin-Thomas, biology professor at York University and board member of the Canadian Society for Chronobiology, told CTV News Toronto in an interview. “So that part of Ontario will be co-ordinating with Manitoba, as they always have.”
When asked whether the province would keep it consistent and make daylight time permanent everywhere in Ontario, a spokesperson for Downey’s office said it will only do so if New York and Quebec do, a stipulation that has prevented the Lieutenant Governor from proclaiming into force a bill that would end the bi-annual changing of the clock. It was passed in 2020 and received royal assent.
“That remains our position,” Julia Facca, press secretary to the attorney general, wrote in an email to CTV News Toronto.
Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said in a social media post earlier this week that this would likely be the last time the province would turn the clocks back.
St-Pierre Plamondon said the Parti Québécois have stood against the clock change for a while, adding that his government plans to consult “all the specialists” in the coming months as part of a parliamentary committee to determine whether Quebec will remain on daylight time or standard time.
New York is still changing their clocks this weekend, however, there have been moves to make daylight time the standard throughout the year.
In 2025, the New York State Senate introduced a bill on it, and it has been referred to the judiciary committee twice. This will only be enacted, however, should Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania introduce similar legislation, which are all in the Eastern Time Zone.
Growing trend to stop clock change
Much of western Canada will no longer change their clocks, remaining on daylight time permanently throughout the year.
Before Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia announced earlier this year that they would also abandon clock changes to stay on daylight time.
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For decades, Saskatchewan hadn’t changed its clocks, but the province is now replacing its time zone legislation after Alberta decided to switch to Central Standard Time.
The Northwest Territories also said it is ending seasonal time changes as of this fall and will now share the same time as Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Yukon has stayed on Pacific daylight time all year round since 2020. The Yukon government surveyed more than 4,800 people and of the 93 per cent who requested an end to time changes, 70 per cent favoured permanent daylight time.
On top of Ontario and Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and Nunavut continue to change their clocks twice a year.
Living on permanent daylight time
Everyone living in permanent daylight time will see another hour of light in the afternoon, but Lakin-Thomas said that hour is “stolen” from their morning.
“They’re going to be getting the kids ready for school in the total darkness. They’re going to be commuting to their jobs and going inside a poorly-lit indoor building, in the dark, and never seeing bright light in the morning,” she said.
This means daytime activities will not be well-synchronized due to a dysregulation to the internal clock in the brain, Lakin-Thomas said. This biological clock, the circadian clock, controls the organs and is reset by natural sunlight.
“Our clock in the brain runs a little bit slow and it needs to be pulled forward with a little bit by some morning light to stay in step with a day-night cycle,” she said. “If we get afternoon light, it does the opposite, and it pushes us late.”
People will stay up later, lose sleep, and their bodies will think it is earlier than it actually is when they wake up to the dark in the morning, Lakin-Thomas said.
“Our stress hormones aren’t ready to help us cope with the stress of the day. Our intestines aren’t ready to digest our breakfast. Our muscles aren’t ready to move and we are forcing ourselves to be active when our bodies are not prepared for it,” she said.
Lakin-Thomas predicts the areas that practice permanent daylight time will not keep it for long because there may be increased rates of chronic disease and a decreased income due to prolonged physiological stress.
“Permanent daylight saving time was tried in the 1970s in the United States and later it was tried in Russia,” she said.
“After one or two winters of getting up in the dark, people hate it, and the public opinion polls swap … so we’re predicting that next spring, a lot of these politicians in the western side of Canada who’ve all fallen into the trap of year-round daylight saving time, because it seems to be publicly popular, they’re going to be very unpopular next spring.”
With files from The Canadian Press
