Question

Canada has 6 different standard times. Give geographical reasons.

Answer 1

Hint: The Prime Meridian, also known as the Greenwich Meridian, or International Meridian, or 0º longitude is the ‘starting point’ for dividing the surface of the Earth into time zones. In general, the time zone changes as the time difference increases by 1 hour.

Complete answer:
The world is divided into 24 time zones. Time zones are important because they are geographical regions that possess uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. The globe division of 15 degrees each, starting at the Prime Meridian (0° longitude) at Greenwich, England, is created to help people get to know what time it is now in another part of the world.

Canada is the second biggest country in the world and ranges from 52° W to 141° W. Therefore, the local time in the west is nearly 6 hours behind that of the east. Countries having a large distance from West to East are often divided into two or more time zones to adjust daytimes to the position of the sun. If Canada had chosen only a single time zone, then both the east and west part of Canada would be offset from local time by 3 hours. As a result, eastern Canada would experience noon by 9:00 AM, while the western Canada would experience it at 3:00 PM. Therefore, selection of multiple time zones was essential for the country.

In Canada, there are 6 time zones that cover four and a half hours. From west to east these time zones are: Pacific (Vancouver), Mountain (Edmonton), Central (Winnipeg), Eastern (Toronto), Atlantic (Halifax) and Newfoundland (St. Johns).

These zones are referred to as standard time zones from the first Sunday in November to the second Sunday in March, and may be abbreviated as PST, MST, CST, etc. From the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November the majority of Canada follows ‘Daylight Saving Time (DST)'. During this summer season the time zones may be abbreviated as PDT, MDT, CDT, etc. It is not necessary that the boundaries of the standard time zones are the same as those of the corresponding daylight saving time zones.

Note: In the World’s largest country i.e., Russia, there exists a time difference of up to 10 hours between the East and the West. In 1919, Canada was divided into 11 time zones. It is also the only country in the world to possess all its time zones over the mainland.