A Brief History of Daylight Saving Time

Manitoba just passed legislation to make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent – no more semi-annual time changes. Ontario passed legislation in November of 2020 but has not yet enacted it, as it is linked to Quebec and New York state following suit. In January of 2025, the Sunshine Protection Act was reintroduced in the United States Congress. If enacted, it would make DST permanent year-round. The modern concept of semi-annual time changes dates to WWI when both the Allies and Germany needed electricity to manufacture weaponry and run factories to support the war effort. With brighter evening hours, the need for electricity to run households was reduced and therefore it could be redirected to the industrial needs. This became important again during the 1970s OPEC oil crisis.

However, it didn’t really begin there. I did some digging and found some interesting history which isn’t widely reported. The original concept of time shifting arose in 1895, in New Zealand, where entomologist George Hudson, a postal worker, proposed a 2-hour time shift, so he could have more evening sunlight to collect insects, after his workday was completed. His proposal was rejected by local scientists.

In 1907, after thinking about this for two years, William Willett, a Londoner, wrote a paper called “The Waste of Daylight,” claiming more leisure time and huge electricity cost savings would arise if DST was implemented. Even so, his motivation was so he could have more evening sunlight to play golf! Mr. Willett’s proposal was very complex and involved four 20-minute time shifts, every Sunday in April, and four more reversing the process, in September. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill were vocal advocates of the time shift concept but supported a less cumbersome process. Mr. Churchill made an impassioned speech, to the Board of Trade, in support of the modified proposal. He said, in part, “An extra yawn one morning, in the springtime, an extra snooze one night, in the autumn, is all that we ask.” Regardless, Mr. Willett’s idea gained traction and in 1908, the British House of Commons introduced the Daylight Saving Bill, but it wasn’t until 1916 the legislation was enacted, to support the war effort.

Locally, in Canada, in 1908, the very first seasonal time shift happened, in Port Arthur and Fort William (now Thunder Bay), Ontario, to give residents more evening leisure time during the summer. On the international stage, the process slowly unwound. Germany, and its ally, Austria-Hungary, officially enacted the first nationwide DST, on April 30th, 1916, and other European nations, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States quickly adopted the practice, for the same wartime energy-saving reasons.

More recently, however, some funny business was afoot. The candy industry was one of the most persistent lobby groups, pushing to extend DST, in the United States, specifically to include Halloween. For decades, the candy lobby fought to push the end of DST from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November, for a simple reason - increased profits. The industry realized, if the sun stayed out for an extra hour, on October 31st, young children would stay out longer and collect (and consume) more candy. While the 1985 push failed to move the Halloween date, the lobby finally won, two decades later, when the Energy Policy Act (2005) officially extended DST by a month. Starting in 2007, the commencement of DST moved to the second Sunday in March, and ended the first Sunday in November, successfully capturing Halloween night. By extending Daylight Saving Time into November industry estimates suggested it could boost candy sales by hundreds of millions of dollars.

While agriculture, the ski industry, airlines, mass transit operators and television networks lobbied unsuccessfully against the DST, the golf, sports equipment, petroleum, outdoor leisure & BBQ industries and general retailers lobbied in support of the shift, resulting in billions of dollars of added revenues for their various industries.

So, you can see the history is muddled and dates back over a century. The motivation has seldom been health-related, despite what many modern proponents suggest, but was almost always driven by personal interests or economic considerations.

Geoff Carpentier is a published author, expedition guide and environmental consultant. Visit Geoff on-line on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.