Daylight Savings Lies.

I'm annoyed if I miss an episode of Coronation Street.

The show, despite my protests, is a soap-opera of sorts.  I am unashamed.  It airs daily here in Canada, historically at the dinner hour, so really not 'technically' a soap.

I am a fan.  As the woody clarinet leads into the gloriously outdated theme song, everything stops. Phone calls, meal preparations, help with homework, arguments, and general parenting cease to exist for thirty-minutes. Friends and family have come to accept that between the hours of six-thirty and seven the world as I know it takes place on a fictional street in Manchester.

Since its inception, and up until recently, viewers in Canada have been watching the show almost nine months behind the actual storyline broadcast in the UK.  Reasons unknown.  Sure, we could have cheated for decades, phoned British relatives for the scoop, or until recently, gone online and spoiled cliffhangers and plot-twists for ourselves.  Faithful Corrie fans are not like this. They do not shake Christmas presents before opening them. They stand patiently at the bus-stop, in winter coats, with bated, foolish anticipation.

Side note: Two of the show's stars ended up in a pub I was performing at last year in Ottawa.  A media tour presumably.  To the absolute bewilderment of my bandmates, I walked off stage mid-set, gave my instrument to a friend in the crowd and spent the rest of the evening as a spineless, giggling, super-fan.



The autumnal equinox has arrived.  The clocks have fallen back.  I have missed a few episodes now.




Saskatchewan, Canada's most quadrangled and over-looked province has little to boast about. Admittedly, this provincial parking-lot has a handful of famous defectors. Gordie Howe for the meatheads.  For the pinkos and bleeding-hearts, Joni Mitchell.  For the history buffs, Diefenbaker.

John George Diefenbaker was Canada's 13th Prime Minister.  Though born in Ontario,  Saskatchewanians claim him as their own.  In 1959 he built the "Diefenbunker", a secret, cold-war, post-apocalyptic underground man-cave, designed to house him and 534 of his besties in the event of a losing tussle with the Ruskies.  It was built to survive a near-miss nuclear attack.

A near-miss. Isn't that a hit?  Anyway, it's a museum now and a short drive from my house.

Factoids aside, Saskatchewan isn't much of a conversation piece.  If it does come up at a dinner-party, nothing much past the interminable prairie-drives and endless bitter-chill are discussed.

"It's the only place where you can lose your dog and watch it run away for 4 days".   Again, another quotation whose origins are hotly debated amongst the cyber-dorks, so for my own purposes, let's say it was Leslie Nielsen.  Nielsen was born in Canada's murder capital, Regina, SK., and promptly escaped.  If you ask me, Neilsen and the dog in the joke probably had the right idea.

Despite its innumerable short-comings, Saskatchewan lives in a reality not understood by the rest of Canada.  Correction: not 'a reality'.  Simply, reality.  It is under no illusions about its cartography. It's not a rhombus, leaning cooly to one side.  It's not a square (a sideways diamond, as Shreddies, in a stroke of cute advertising genius, attempted).

Nope.  It's a goddamned rectangle.

They accept it.

There's not much in Saskatchewan either.  It's also cold as hell in the winter.

As in space, so in time, Saskatchewan has decided not to live a lie.  Daylight Savings Time does not apply to them.  They have opted out of the farce and chosen to accept realities both spatial and in time.

If I may quote Einstein horribly:

"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the sole of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength.  They are radical.  Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind union of the two will preserve an independent reality. "

I grant that this is a stretch. Shameful. I've gone too far. I've missed the point. I don't have a goddamned clue what I'm talking about.

What I do know is I live in a place that operates in the Daylight Savings 'Lie' (patent pending) 34 weeks a year.  Reality for most of Canada lives outside of actual Standard Time.   So do we make-believe our year away to get a little extra sunshine, a little extra sleep, stay open for business a little later?

All of this effort for a measly sixty minutes?  That's two episodes of Coronation Street.

Saskatchewan isn't having it.  They've gone unappreciated until today.  Rich in testicular fortitude. Mavericks in accepting the truth.


I have decided to let my iPhone tell me where and when I am.  There are apps.  They are usually a dollar.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Rob has just told his sister Carla that he pushed Tina, for whose death Peter has been framed, off the roof, at the same time his fiancée is having her bachelorette party, where most are getting smashed, and "truths", whether based in reality or not, will be revealed at 6:30pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Cue the clarinet.