Current local time in St. John's

Annual daylight in St. John's

Did You Know?

Until 1935, St. John's Clocks Ran 52 Seconds Off the Half Hour

George Street in St. John's is two blocks long and contains, as far as anyone can tell, nothing that is not a bar, a pub or a restaurant.

The logistics follow from this. The street is closed to vehicles for most of the day and all evening, and opens to traffic only in the mornings — specifically so the bars can be restocked. It does not usually fill up until around midnight and stays busy until as late as six in the morning.

Every tourist board in Newfoundland will tell you it has more bars per square foot than anywhere in North America. That is a claim rather than a measurement, and it is repeated so consistently that it has become the street's official description. What is not in dispute is the two blocks, and what is on them.

There is a second thing worth knowing about this city before we get to its clock.

On a hill above the harbour stands Signal Hill, where in 1901 Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal — a message that had crossed the Atlantic without a cable. St. John's became, briefly, one of the most important points on the map of global communication.

Which makes the clocks in the town below all the more curious, because at that moment St. John's was keeping a time of its own: 3 hours, 30 minutes and 52 seconds behind Greenwich.

Newfoundland's clock is among the most accurate on this entire site, and it grew straight out of the city's own meridian.

Before 1935, St. John's ran on its own local mean time. Since 1884 Newfoundland's standard had been the city's meridian — 3 hours, 30 minutes and 52 seconds behind Greenwich — and from 1917 the clocks also went forward an hour each summer.

In 1935 the Commission of Government — Newfoundland was then a separate British dominion, not part of Canada — passed a Standard Time Act setting the whole dominion at exactly three and a half hours behind Greenwich, trimming off the old 52 seconds.

The half hour was not a compromise or a gesture. It was arithmetic. A half-hour zone at UTC−3:30 is centred on the 52°30′ west meridian. St. John's sits at about 52°42′ west.

The city sits almost exactly on that meridian. St. John's clock runs within about one minute of its own solar noon — among the closest alignments of any city in this project.

The clock: Newfoundland joined Canada on 31 March 1949, and kept the half hour rather than adopting Atlantic Time like its neighbours.

It has since defended that decision. A proposal to switch to Atlantic Standard Time in 1963 collapsed under public opposition.

There was one further experiment. In 1988 the provincial government tried double daylight saving time — moving the clocks forward two hours instead of one. It was deeply unpopular and did not last.

The half hour has become a genuine cultural marker. National broadcasts in Canada famously add "…half an hour later in Newfoundland." Television produced elsewhere in the country is built to start on the hour, so on the island it starts at the half hour instead, and broadcasters adjust their listings accordingly. The phrase has ended up on merchandise.

Newfoundland is also the first place in Canada to reach each New Year.

Until 1935 the city kept time by its own meridian, down to the second. It then rounded that to the one offset on the map that actually fit, and has refused to give it up ever since.