Daylight savings time

The other day, I was looking at the September 19 1925 edition of the Toronto Globe, and I discovered that daylight savings time was scheduled to end the next day.

The front page of the paper contained this notice:

In 1925, it was just assumed that everybody would go to church on Sunday.

The paper also had this official notice from the mayor, Thomas Foster:

God Save the King! Thomas Foster (1852-1945) was the mayor of Toronto from 1925 to 1927, when he was well into his seventies. He was a teenager when Canada was created, and lived to see the end of the Second World War; he is now buried in a large mausoleum in Uxbridge that the town cannot afford to maintain. His will left $500,000 for cancer research, money for an annual picnic at Exhibition Park for children, money to feed wild birds in Toronto, and prizes for the mothers who gave birth to the most children in four specified ten-year periods, the last of which was 1954 to 1964.

The Time and Date website has the complete history of daylight savings time in Toronto. The amount of yearly DST has changed frequently over the years since it was first instituted in 1918:

• The first four years were April 14-October 27, March 30-October 26, May 2-September 26, and then May 15-September 15 in 1921. Mid-May to mid-September remained in place until 1923.
• In 1924, DST was revised to be from the first Sunday in May to the third Sunday in September.
• In 1927, there was a slight change: DST went from the last Sunday in April or May 1 if the last Sunday in April was the 25th, to the last Sunday in September or October 1 if the last Sunday in September was the 24th. This must have been a bit confusing, but it remained in place until 1937.
• In 1938, DST would have started on May 1, but the city decided to go with April 24th instead. Similarly, in 1939, DST ended on September 24, not October 1. I have no idea why.
• During the war, starting April 28, 1940, DST remained in force all year round, ending finally on September 30, 1945. In 1946, the city reverted to the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in September.
• In 1947, 1948, and 1949, for some reason, the city decided to set its clocks forward and back at midnight instead of 2 a.m.
• In 1949 and 1950, the city experimented with ending DST on the last Sunday in November instead of the last Sunday in September. I guess that this proved unpopular, as the city reverted in 1951 to moving the clocks forward at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April, and then moving them back again at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in September.
• In 1957, the city started moving the clocks back at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October. This remained in place for 30 years.
• In 1987, clocks were moved forward on the first Sunday in April, not the last. This remained in place for 20 more years.
• In 2007, the city changed to its present system: clocks are now moved forward on the second Sunday in March, and back on the first Sunday in November.