The clock ‘falls back’ one hour Sunday Nov. 7 when Daylight Saving Time (DST) is suspended for the winter months.

I’m not unhappy about that, but some people are. They hate the idea of changing their clocks every spring and every fall.

There is some evidence that the time changes that come with DST create some individual health concerns. Several clinical studies have reported increased risk of heart attacks and strokes with DST time shifts.

It is believed that time changes can upset circadian rhythms, which are physical, mental, and behavioural changes that follow a 24-hour cycle. These rhythms are natural processes that respond to light and dark and affect most organisms, including plants and animals.

Just one hour of time shift can make it harder to wake up in the morning and fall asleep at night on a set schedule. This can lead to loss of sleep and a decline in alertness, which have been linked to auto accidents and workplace injuries.

Ontario has voted to eliminate the semi-annual time changes but has not done so, saying that neighbouring Quebec and New York must do likewise to avoid confusion and complications.

Nine of 10 provinces and two of the three territories observe daylight time, which has been around in Canada for 113 years. It was first introduced in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay and my hometown) after businessman John Hewitson campaigned for it, saying people wanted to enjoy an extra hour of summer sun.

The idea of DST was attractive back then because candles and gas lamps were still used for lightning in many places. That extra hour of daylight gave workers more daylight for working and saved employers some money on lighting.

Those aren’t important factors nowadays but still one-quarter of the world observes daylight time. Some areas have gone to permanent daylight time, following it 12 months of the year and avoiding biannual time changes.

I like the idea of daylight time in the spring, when we get more daylight at the end of the day. However, I’m not so keen at this time of year when DST brings darkness about 5 p.m.

The darkness of November and December can be depressing, but it also can be uplifting.

The fall time change gives me a warm feeling of change. With the dark days comes the satisfaction of accomplishment. The docks are pulled for winter, the boat is serviced and stored, leaves are raked, summer furniture put away and the house and its surroundings are buttoned down for the first snowfalls.

Switching from summer to winter footing is hard work, but when done right it pays you back with that good feeling. And, when everything is put away and you are prepared for winter there is more time to do things that you were too busy to get to during summer.

There are books you wanted to read, movies you hoped to watch and calls to friends you had put off because summer is such a busy time.

The really uplifting part of autumn DST change and its early darkness is the down time it provides for reflection. Time to think about what’s been happening over the past year, and what might lie ahead.

There is so much happening in the world – and our individual lives – that it is good to have more time for reflection. Life moves quickly nowadays and having less time for thinking can lead to bad decisions.

This time of year also brings the excitement of knowing that after this period of shorter days another change is not far away. Come Dec. 21 – only 44 days after the start of autumn DST, Mother Nature starts the sun moving north again, creating increasingly longer days.

Longer and brighter days will bring more time for winter sports and other activities. As the sun gets warmer and stays up longer, we know that March and the time to ‘spring forward’ are not far off. 

Daylight time has been a controversial subject for an entire century. It has both benefits and disadvantages, but I have no interest in trying to figure out whether it’s a good or bad thing.

All I know is that we borrow an hour one night in spring and pay it back in the fall. 

                                                #

Let there be white!

The plan this week was to write a column about the SNC-Lavalin political madness whipped up by the muddled minds of the nation’s political elite.

Plans change; this one because my mind refused to waste one more millisecond reading or hearing about political incompetency and corruption.

The SNC-Lavalin scandal, which could have been avoided with some honest moral leadership, continues while the critical problems of climate change, the opioid epidemic, the growing poor-rich chasm are lost in a fog of political war. It’s like kids screaming at each other over a broken toy instead of working together to fix it.

So I decided to write about my new car instead of the SNC-Lavalin mess.

Some months ago my wife and I agreed it would make sense to trade our aging car and 11-year-old pickup truck for one new vehicle.

It is a nice car. Smooth, frisky and smells good inside. The only complaint is that all the bells, buzzers, blinking lights and computerized thingies are almost as annoying as the politicians arguing whether corporate criminal acts should be ignored in the interest of saving jobs.

What is strange about our new car is its colour. It is white.

Many years ago I vowed never to drive a white car. It was a vow developed from a childhood trauma.

The trauma occurred the day my father came home with our very first family vehicle. It was a brand new boxy 1956 Chevy with pimple tail lights, and should have been the envy of a neighbourhood of rusting, slouch-back 1940s models.

It wasn’t. It was totally white and without an inch of chrome to give it some personality.

The neighbourhood kids were on to it immediately. Their taunts were devastating.

“Hey, there’s an ambulance at Poling’s house!”

“No, it’s theirs. His old man bought an ambulance.”

The adults were not any kinder.

“Did it come with a siren?” the next door neighbour asked.

“How much would it cost for a rooftop red light option?” asked another.

The jokes shouted across the lawns and the whispers and smirks at his workplace parking lot were too much for dad. One day he brought the Chevy back to Port Arthur Motors where he had bought it. It came back the next day with a painted blue roof. No longer could it be called The Ambulance.

All those memories washed over me as I drove our new, white car from the dealership. Would friends and neighbours start calling it The Ambulance?

Then after a couple of days on the road I realized that I was not alone in having a white car. Many of the vehicles around me, even trucks, were white.

Some research uncovered a startling fact: In recent years white has become the most popular colour for new vehicles. Every second car now imported from Asia is white. Worldwide, 37 per cent of all new vehicles in 2016 were painted white.

So instead of being laughed at and called The Ambulance my new car is lost in a sea of white cars out there on the streets and highways.

One reason for the trend to white vehicles is that some people consider them safer. Surveys show that black vehicles are 12 per cent more likely to be involved in an accident than white. Grey vehicles are 11 per cent more likely, and silver 10 per cent.

There are disadvantages to having a white vehicle. It is difficult to find in parking lots where the majority of vehicles seem to be white.

Also, there were times this past winter at the lake when I thought our car had been stolen. I would get up in the morning, look out to the parking spot and could not see it. It was indistinguishable in the fresh-fallen snow.

But my car’s colour is not simply white. No car colour these days has a name that is plain or simple. Blues, for instance, are no longer simply blues. Your new blue vehicle might be listed as Estoril, Indigo, Blu Nettuno or some other florid appellation dreamed up by marketing ninjas.

No, my new car is not a plain and simple white. It is Blizzard, which likely is why I had so much trouble finding it during the winter.

#

Coming from America

The Canadian customs officer feeds my passport into the scanner, then looks up and asks: “What are you bringing back with you?”

I suppress the urge to say what I always want to say after crossing the U.S.-Canada border: “Nostalgia. Just a lot of nostalgia.”

Each time I return from the U.S. I am loaded with nostalgia. I have so many good feelings about America – so many good memories – and find myself yearning for the way things used to be. Way back, when the border was barely noticeable.

There is a sense of lost freedom when crossing the border these days. Security has diluted much of the welcoming you used to feel both coming and going. The world is smaller and much too dangerous for anyone to drop their guard.

Few would argue that increased border security is not a necessity, but it has reduced the pleasure of going south.

Besides security, other factors also lessen the joy of cross border travel. Exploding health care costs make the possibility of getting injured or sick in the U.S. a serious concern.  

A slip, a fall and a broken arm can cost a visitor to the U.S. hundreds of dollars. A heart attack that leads to stents or more serious surgery can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ontario’s health insurance pays roughly $400 a day for U.S. hospital costs but U.S. hospitals charge far beyond that. Ontario also reimburses U.S. physician costs, but only at rates it pays Ontario doctors – rates far below what U.S. physicians charge.

Supplementary is a must for most of us travelling into the U.S., even for a day or two. Then there is the worry about your insurance company trying to avoid paying your claim. Insurance is a business and the fewer payouts, the better the profit.

Anyone buying travel insurance should spend considerable time and effort learning  eligibility requirements, terms and conditions, pre-existing condition limitations, restrictions and exclusions of the policy.

On top of security and health insurance worries there also is the concern about the money exchange rate, which was relatively stable until recent times. In times long past the exchange rate was really not a factor with the Canadian dollar running at par, or even above par for long periods like in the 1950s.

Changes to security, health care costs and exchange rates are what they are and we can’t go back to the way things were. Still, it is nice to slip into nostalgia.

Years ago we never gave much thought to the border. We used to walk across the bridge at Pigeon River into Minnesota to buy ice cream with barely a wave to customs officials. Visits to Duluth to buy clothes for the new school year or to visit relatives and friends were regular with no thought of health insurance or counting days outside the country.

My grandfather used to run the Lake Superior shoreline in his small boat from Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) to Minnesota lakeshore taverns to drink beer with friends.

Little thought was given to the border, or to specific citizenship. Rules were not nearly as rigid and many families had a history of mixed citizenship. It was sometimes hard to remember who was Canadian and who was American.

My maternal grandmother was born Canadian in Alberta but died an American in Nevada. My paternal grandmother was a Canadian from the Kenora area, and lived a chunk of her life in Minnesota before moving the family to Sault Ste. Marie, then Port Arthur. I can’t even recall if she died a Canadian or an American.

My dad’s dad was born an American who became Canadianized but never changed his citizenship. My dad was an American who eventually took Canadian citizenship.

It was like that back then. Less concern about borders and citizenship. Less involvement by government.

Back then we considered ourselves North Americans with more freedom to come and go where and when we wanted. We found little need for nationalistic labels.

I would love to see a return of those days, but that will never happen. However, a little nostalgia once in while never hurt anyone.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Fast Hockey; Faster Mouths

What terrific hockey! Wednesday night's Stanley Cup opener between  Vancouver and Boston, plus the Boston-Tampa final game, were two of the best hockey games I've ever seen.

End to end play, spectacular goaltending on both ends. Seventy shots on the goaltenders and only one got in. That with 18 seconds remaining in the third period.

This is the hockey we all remember watching as kids. I was sitting in front of the TV at home, but could smell and feel the excitement inside that Vancouver rink. I felt like a kid again, back in the old tumble down Port Arthur arena where people were hanging from the rafters screaming for the West End Bruins.

Impressive Wednesday night was the staying power of the teams. Full force hockey until the final seconds. Looks like we are in for a wonderful series of hockey games the way we want to see them played.

The only negative for me, and I never thought I'd hear myself say it, was I had to turn to NBC to watch the final period. I couldn't take that constant stream of chatter on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. The colour commentary was non-stop and annoying. I don't know who was doing it, could care less, as I could care less about Don Cherry, Ron What's his name and the other talking heads. I'm there to watch the hockey.

It seems to be a sick trend in sporting event coverage. Fill every second with your own voice. Guys, come up for air, please. Hockey is a fast game and I like to have at least a few seconds to absorb for myself what is happening.