We come out of daylight savings time on Sunday, November 6, when we roll back our clocks one hour at 2 am. This means we all get an extra hour of sleep!

The Western world has been jumping forward an hour in the Spring and falling back that hour in the Fall since 30 April 1916, when Germany and its World War I allies were the first to use it as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918.

In Canada, we've observed Daylight Savings Time since the 1970s - with some exceptions. Our neighbours to the east in Saskatchewan do not spring forward or fall back. But even within Saskatchewan there are exceptions. Lloydminster, which straddles the Alberta / Saskatchewan border, is part of the Mountain Standard Time zone and follows Alberta's practice of observing Daylight Savings, while the small towns of Denare Beach and Creighton along the Manitoba border unofficially observe Daylight Savings Time in the central time zone, thereby keeping the same time as larger neighbouring Manitoba communities. There are similar, peculiar exceptions in BC, Ontario, Quebec, and Nunavut. It's a wonder we can travel across this great country of ours and know what time it is!

As expected, the system works in reverse in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are likewise reversed. Daylight Savings Time is generally not observed near the equator, where sunrise times do not vary enough to justify it. Only a minority of the world's population actually uses Daylight Savings Time; it's not generally observed in Asia and Africa.