ATIKOKAN — An Atikokan councillor wanted to “start the conversation” to reexamine what time zone the town is in.
That discussion has now ended — at least in council chambers.
At its March 23 committee of the whole meeting, council agreed with a recommendation by administration to halt further exploration of how to change the time zone to align with Thunder Bay. The issue was brought forward in February by Coun. Gordon Martin — at the time council directed town staff to investigate further.
“Given that this topic has been discussed for many years and that any change would ultimately require action at the provincial level and coordination with other jurisdictions, it is recommended that council discontinue further pursuit of this matter at this time,” a report to council by clerk Sue Bates said.
“Municipal staff and council resources would be better directed toward current priorities and issues facing the community that require immediate attention and action.”
Atikokan is technically located in the Central Time zone but doesn’t change its clocks in accordance with Daylight Saving Time. Effectively, that means it’s aligned with Eastern Standard Time during the fall and winter months. When clocks elsewhere “spring forward,” it stays put, placing it in Central Daylight Time for that part of the year.
Martin had argued the town should be permanently in Eastern Time, following Thunder Bay and points east, saying that more and more services are being offered virtually and remotely and many of them are provided out of Thunder Bay.
“I feel like times have changed and Atikokan hasn’t,” Martin said in an interview with Newswatch in February.
The councillor was the latest to bring the time zone issue forward locally. Administration’s report included a series of historical documents, including past staff reports, correspondences and news articles from various times the debate has come up in the past.
A newspaper article from 1987 said the council of the day voted down a two-year pilot that would have seen the town adopt Eastern Daylight Time for 1987 and 1988. That same article said Atikokan went to Eastern Standard Time in 1953 so it would be in the same time zone as Thunder Bay “to avoid confusion with iron ore shipments to the Lakehead from Atikokan’s iron mines.”
“A poll conducted two years ago found residents were more than two-to-one against changing from year-round Eastern Standard Time,” the article said.
A February 1998 letter from then clerk-treasurer Susan Bryk to a writer requesting information highlighted several other times that the issue was brought forward, including a push in 1984 to adopt Daylight Saving Time, a referendum in 1985 held alongside local elections that saw over 68 per cent of voters reject a change, the failed 1987 two-year trial proposal and another ballot question in 1997 that saw just under 60 per cent reject changing.
“As you can see, our residents are very determined to ‘stay as we are,’” Bryk’s letter said.
A separate report to council also indicated the issue came up again in 2002, with city staff saying then that “municipalities are not empowered to deal with the question of time,” and that legally changing anything would require lobbying the province.
Atikokan Mayor Rob Ferguson told the March 23 meeting that he’d like the municipality to focus its energy elsewhere.
“I’d just like to put forward that we just drop this idea and let administration do more pressing things than chasing our tails on this,” he said. “We’re Atikokan and we don’t dictate what happens outside our municipalities.”
“It’s a nice thing to throw out there, and it’s nice to get some publicity and talk about things, but let’s just move on to some more pressing issues.”
That 2002 memo to council, credited to “Warren,” and which noted the complications the municipality would face to address the time zone issue also summed up thoughts on the debate at the time.
“Notwithstanding all of this, any resident or business owner may set his clock and take his lunch hours any way he damn well wants.”
