Time change Sunday; clocks spring ahead

At 2 a.m. on Sunday — or before you go to bed Saturday night — set your clocks ahead one hour as North America returns to standard time from daylight time.

Benjamin Franklin, famous for saying “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” is credited with igniting the flame that led to making the best use of daylight hours. When acting as American envoy to France circa 1784, Franklin was critical of Parisians' habits of sleeping in while the sun was shining and then burning candles during dark nights. He even proposed imposing a tax on window shutters, rationing candles and using church bells as alarm clocks to wake people at sunrise.

In 1905, William Willet, an English builder and naturalist, was sufficiently disturbed by Londoners' habits of sleeping through a large part of early morning daylight hours during summer months to embark on a personal mission. His proposal to use "Daylight Saving Time" was published in 1915.

The Germans and their allies were the first to embrace Willett's proposal in 1916 during the First World War. Britain and her allies followed the lead to alleviate the problems of wartime coal shortages and air raid blackouts. Although there had been lobbying for the United States to implement the change, there was resistance from railroad companies. The U.S.'s entry into the war precipitated the change in 1918.

Saskatchewan, situated in Canada's central time zone, does not observe daylight time with the exception of a few towns near the Alberta border.