St. John's

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Before 1935, St. John's Ran on Three Different Times at Once

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 what was happening in the town below slightly harder to explain, because at that moment nobody in St. John's could agree what time it was.

Newfoundland's clock is the most accurate on this entire site, and it took a genuine mess to produce it.

Before 1935, St. John's had no single agreed time. Some residents kept solar time. The post office kept its own version of solar time. And the wireless telegraph office ran on Eastern time, because that is what it received.

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 three and a half hours behind Greenwich.

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 is essentially on the line. St. John's clock runs within about one minute of its own solar noon — the closest alignment 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 twice at the ballot box. Proposals to switch to Atlantic Standard Time were put forward in 1951 and again in 1963. Both 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. Every national time announcement in Canada carries the phrase "and half past 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 and in the name of a comedy troupe.

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

A hundred years ago the city could not agree what time it was. It then chose the one offset on the map that actually fit, and has refused to give it up ever since — twice by referendum.

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