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School-aged kids in Ontario get their spring break this week, while those in Quebec had theirs last week. Across Canada, with a few exceptions, we had to move our clocks forward an hour this past Saturday-into-Sunday in the semi-annual ritual of time-shifting.
It wasn't always quite like this, even in my lifetime.
Early in my school career, our spring break began on Good Friday, regardless of when it fell in that particular year. It might be any time between mid-March and late April. That, of course, made it challenging to plan the school schedule and curriculum, as the second term could be shorter or longer depending on the vagaries of the Easter holidays. It also probably mucked up some family travel plans - or maybe it made them easier, since kids across Canada were typically all on holiday at the same time. And it made for a long holidayless stretch between Christmas and Easter. But it did mean that by the time Easter rolled around, the weather might actually be nice enough for us to get outside on our bikes or roller-skates, in an era before helicopter parenting was quite so prevalent.
Looking at the changing of the clocks, we used to spring forward on the last weekend in April and fall back on the last weekend of October - Halloween was always post-fallback - making for equal portions of the year on Daylight and Standard time. At some point we decided we wanted more daylight at the end of the day, and started springing forward on the FIRST weekend in April. Later still - I was in university by this time and I think it was the oil-price shocks and threats and threats of "freezing in the dark" that provided the impetus - we decided we had to harmonize with the Americans and spring forward even earlier, the second weekend in March. So now we only have about four months of the year on "standard" time and the other eight months on daylight "saving" time. If we're going to eventually dispense with this ludicrous seasonal timeshiftimg that wreaks havoc on our health, safety and circadian rhythms (and I hope we do), it would make more sense to adopt Standard time as our year-round standard. It would also have helped my six-year-old self who could never fathom why the sundial at the Experimental Farm always seemed to be an hour slow!
I think the practice of school breaks always being in March began some time while I was in the intermediate grades, by which time I was more independent and no longer as concerned about being able to go out and play in my immediate neighbourhood. Even so, the break (in Ontario, at least) was typically scheduled for later in March than it is now. I remember one year when Easter was in late March and the Easter weekend fell at the end of our March break.
At the Log Farm in Ottawa, which re-creates 1860s life for kids and adults of the late 20th to early 21st century, I remember going to a demonstration of sugaring off in which one of the guides said something like "That's what your March break was for!" Of course, he was just helping to make history come alive for all the wide-eyed kids in our group, but I wonder if he was aware that for most of the years of my childhood, sugaring off was pretty much over and done with by the time our spring break rolled around. Still, he had a point. I've been told that the reason kids even now get two full months of summer holidays is that in the olden days, they would have been kept at home as they would have been needed to help with the harvest.
We need to adapt to the times, of course, but the changes we make aren't always the most sensible ones.
It wasn't always quite like this, even in my lifetime.
Early in my school career, our spring break began on Good Friday, regardless of when it fell in that particular year. It might be any time between mid-March and late April. That, of course, made it challenging to plan the school schedule and curriculum, as the second term could be shorter or longer depending on the vagaries of the Easter holidays. It also probably mucked up some family travel plans - or maybe it made them easier, since kids across Canada were typically all on holiday at the same time. And it made for a long holidayless stretch between Christmas and Easter. But it did mean that by the time Easter rolled around, the weather might actually be nice enough for us to get outside on our bikes or roller-skates, in an era before helicopter parenting was quite so prevalent.
Looking at the changing of the clocks, we used to spring forward on the last weekend in April and fall back on the last weekend of October - Halloween was always post-fallback - making for equal portions of the year on Daylight and Standard time. At some point we decided we wanted more daylight at the end of the day, and started springing forward on the FIRST weekend in April. Later still - I was in university by this time and I think it was the oil-price shocks and threats and threats of "freezing in the dark" that provided the impetus - we decided we had to harmonize with the Americans and spring forward even earlier, the second weekend in March. So now we only have about four months of the year on "standard" time and the other eight months on daylight "saving" time. If we're going to eventually dispense with this ludicrous seasonal timeshiftimg that wreaks havoc on our health, safety and circadian rhythms (and I hope we do), it would make more sense to adopt Standard time as our year-round standard. It would also have helped my six-year-old self who could never fathom why the sundial at the Experimental Farm always seemed to be an hour slow!
I think the practice of school breaks always being in March began some time while I was in the intermediate grades, by which time I was more independent and no longer as concerned about being able to go out and play in my immediate neighbourhood. Even so, the break (in Ontario, at least) was typically scheduled for later in March than it is now. I remember one year when Easter was in late March and the Easter weekend fell at the end of our March break.
At the Log Farm in Ottawa, which re-creates 1860s life for kids and adults of the late 20th to early 21st century, I remember going to a demonstration of sugaring off in which one of the guides said something like "That's what your March break was for!" Of course, he was just helping to make history come alive for all the wide-eyed kids in our group, but I wonder if he was aware that for most of the years of my childhood, sugaring off was pretty much over and done with by the time our spring break rolled around. Still, he had a point. I've been told that the reason kids even now get two full months of summer holidays is that in the olden days, they would have been kept at home as they would have been needed to help with the harvest.
We need to adapt to the times, of course, but the changes we make aren't always the most sensible ones.
