BC time change 2026: do the clocks go back on November 1?

“Dark” here means before first light or after last light: civil twilight, the sun 6° below the horizon. The sun itself does not change: on the new clock every sunrise and sunset from November to March reads an hour later than it would have. Mornings get darker and evenings lighter; summer is unchanged. The sun rises after 9 a.m. on 64 days (0 on the old rule).

The difference with some places now changes with the seasons: Seattle, Portland and California (1 hour behind in winter, same time in summer) and Toronto and Ottawa (2 hours ahead in winter, 3 hours ahead in summer).

Until the 1880s, each town kept its own time, set by the sun: noon was when the sun stood highest. Local sun time shifts by about a minute for every 18 km east or west, so neighbouring towns’ clocks disagreed. That hardly mattered on horseback, but it made railway timetables a mess (The Canadian Encyclopedia). British railways adopted Greenwich time as “railway time” in 1847 (Royal Museums Greenwich).

The Canadian railway engineer Sandford Fleming proposed the worldwide answer. In 1876 he missed a train in Ireland because the timetable printed p.m. for a.m. (Sandford Fleming virtual exhibit). In a paper to the Canadian Institute in Toronto in 1879, he set out 24 time zones, each 15° of longitude and one hour wide, counted from a single prime meridian (Fleming’s 1879 paper; The Canadian Encyclopedia).

North American railways switched to hour-wide zones at noon on November 18, 1883 (The Canadian Encyclopedia). In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., with delegates from about 25 countries, chose Greenwich as the prime meridian: 21 votes for, one against, and France and Brazil abstaining. Fleming attended for Canada (conference protocols; Royal Museums Greenwich). The conference left the zones themselves to each country (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada).

Today the world’s reference is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the successor to Greenwich Mean Time. It runs on atomic clocks, with an occasional leap second to keep it within 0.9 seconds of the Earth’s rotation; the International Bureau of Weights and Measures computes it (BIPM), and the National Research Council keeps Canada’s official time (NRC; NRC: leap second).

In theory each zone is 15° wide. In practice its edges follow provincial, national and practical boundaries (The Canadian Encyclopedia). In Canada, the provinces and territories, not Ottawa, decide their time zones and whether to use daylight saving time (NRC).

Benjamin Franklin mentioned the idea in 1784, without proposing it (Royal Museums Greenwich). In 1895, the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson proposed moving the clocks seasonally to gain evening daylight (time zone database notes). In 1907 William Willett, in London, self-published The Waste of Daylight, arguing for summer time (Royal Museums Greenwich).

Canada was early. Port Arthur and Fort William (now Thunder Bay) moved their clocks ahead in May 1908; the city’s archivist says they may have been the first in the world (CBC). Germany was the first country to adopt it, in 1916, and Britain followed weeks later (Royal Museums Greenwich).

• 1918: Canada’s government brought in daylight saving time to raise wartime production (The Canadian Encyclopedia).
• 1942 to 1945: Canada stayed on daylight time all year as “war time”, as did the United States (The Canadian Encyclopedia).
• After the wars: provinces and cities decided for themselves (The Canadian Encyclopedia).
• 1966: the U.S. Uniform Time Act set common dates. A U.S. state may opt out only by staying on standard time all year, so permanent daylight time needs Congress (U.S. Code, 15 U.S.C. 260a).
• 2007: the U.S. moved the dates to the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November (NIST). Canadian provinces followed, for trade and travel (The Canadian Encyclopedia).

Vancouver has moved its clocks every year since 1946, after wartime rules ended (time zone database notes). Not all of B.C. followed. Dawson Creek has stayed on mountain standard time, UTC-7, all year since 1972 (time zone database notes), as the rest of the Peace region does today (Province of B.C.), and Fort Nelson joined them in March 2015 after a local vote (time zone database mailing list). Creston, in the Kootenays, has not changed its clocks in over a century (time zone database notes).

In 2019 the Province asked British Columbians what they wanted. A record 223,273 people answered, and 93% chose permanent daylight saving time (news release; engagement report). That fall, the legislature passed the Interpretation Amendment Act, 2019 (Bill 40), which defines Pacific time as seven hours behind UTC and lets cabinet bring it in by regulation (Bill 40; Interpretation Act, section 26). The Province said it meant to move together with Washington, Oregon, California and Yukon (news release, 2019).

The American side stalled. Washington and Oregon passed laws in 2019 and California voters approved Proposition 7 in 2018, but each needs Congress to allow permanent daylight time (Washington; Oregon; California). The U.S. House passed a bill on July 14, 2026; it is waiting in the Senate (Congress.gov; House Energy and Commerce).

On March 2, 2026, B.C. stopped waiting. The Province said the change would improve health, reduce disruption for families and businesses and give more evening light in winter, and noted that “recent actions from the U.S. have shifted” how it approaches alignment (news release). Clocks went forward for the last time on March 8, 2026. In September 2026 the Province gave the new zone its short name, PCT (news release; Province of B.C.).

• Alberta moved to permanent Alberta Time (ABT), UTC-6, so it stays one hour ahead of Prince George all year (Government of Alberta). In a 2021 referendum Albertans had narrowly voted against permanent daylight time, 49.8% to 50.2% (Elections Alberta).
• The East Kootenay (Cranbrook, Fernie, Sparwood, Invermere, Kimberley, Radium Hot Springs, Elkford) stays with Alberta on UTC-6 (Province of B.C.). The Province’s page lists Golden on UTC-7, but Golden’s council voted on September 22, 2026 to stay with Alberta instead (CTV News).
• The Peace and northern Rockies (Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Chetwynd, Hudson’s Hope, Taylor, Tumbler Ridge) keep UTC-7: from now on the same time as Prince George all year (Province of B.C.).
• Yukon has been on UTC-7 all year since 2020 (NRC). Saskatchewan stays on UTC-6 all year (Government of Saskatchewan).
• Washington, Oregon and California still change their clocks unless Congress acts. From November to March, Prince George is an hour ahead of Seattle; from March to November, they match (U.S. Code; Province of B.C.).

On Highway 16, the clocks change at the Alberta border in Yellowhead Pass, about 25 km west of Jasper (The Canadian Encyclopedia).

Most people agree on ending the clock changes. The argument is about which clock to keep: daylight time (B.C.’s choice: lighter evenings, darker mornings) or standard time (lighter mornings, earlier sunsets).

The case for permanent standard time. Sleep and body-clock researchers mostly favour it: they say standard time fits the body clock better, because morning light is what sets it. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Canadian Sleep Society, which points to late winter sunrises at Canadian latitudes (CSS), all back permanent standard time. An October 2026 analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal concluded that the weight of health evidence favours standard time (CMAJ).

The cost of switching. In the U.S., fatal car crashes rose about 6% in the week after clocks spring forward (University of Colorado Boulder, on Fritz et al. 2020). A review of studies found a modest rise in heart attacks in the days after the spring change, and no clear change after the fall change (Manfredini et al. 2019). Both permanent options remove these switches.

The case for permanent daylight time. More daylight after work and school in winter, when people are out and about. One U.S. study found robberies fell 7% after daylight time began, mostly in the evening hours that gained light (Doleac and Sanders 2015). B.C. also cited simpler scheduling, less disruption for families and small businesses, and its 2019 survey (news release).

Energy. The effect is small either way. A U.S. Department of Energy study of the 2007 extension found savings of about 0.5% of electricity on each extra day, 0.03% over the year (U.S. DOE); a study in Indiana found daylight time raised home electricity use by about 1% (Kotchen and Grant).

A cautionary tale. The U.S. tried year-round daylight time in 1974. Support fell as winter mornings stayed dark, and it was dropped that fall (Popular Science).

For what the choice means for daylight in Prince George, see What it means in Prince George above.

For most people there is nothing to do (Province of B.C.). Phones, computers and most connected devices take their rules from the IANA time zone database, which added B.C.’s change in release 2026b in April 2026; they pick it up with normal software updates (time zone database).

• Devices that missed updates. An old phone, tablet or computer may go back an hour on its own on November 1. If it can no longer be updated, set its time zone to one that stays at UTC-7 all year, such as Arizona (mountain standard time without daylight saving).
• Clocks that set themselves. Radio-controlled clocks, some thermostats, cameras and car dashboards have the old rules built in. Check them on November 1.
• Clocks you set by hand (stove, microwave, older cars) are already right: leave them.
• Meetings and calls with the U.S. West Coast. From November to March, Prince George is an hour ahead of Seattle, Portland and California. Check recurring meetings set in another zone.
• Travel. Flight, bus and ferry times are local. Alberta stays an hour ahead all year; the Peace region is now on the same time as Prince George.

Nothing on this page is typed in by hand. Offsets and clock changes come from the IANA time zone database, the public-domain list of every zone’s rules that phones and computers use; Prince George follows the zone America/Vancouver. Our server loads each new release, and checks it agrees with the official rule from Province of B.C.: B.C.’s new time zone (Pacific time). If it ever does not, the computed tables are hidden rather than shown wrong.

Sunrise and sunset use NOAA’s solar position equations for the city centre, with standard refraction; they are within about a minute. Hills, trees and buildings make the sun appear a little later and set a little earlier than the times shown. The date picker runs the same code in your browser with our server’s offsets, so an older phone that still has the old rules gets the same answers.

The same data is in our free API: /api/v1/time and /api/v1/time/sun (documentation).