Albertans will no longer be collecting an extra hour of sleep this weekend, as the province moves to permanent Alberta Time or ABT.
For decades, Albertans have become accustomed to turning back our clocks by one hour every fall, as Alberta shifted from daylight to standard time.
This year, provincial legislation under the Official Time Act ended semi-annual clock changes in Alberta.
The change means Albertans will experience darkness much later into the morning hours during fall and winter, with sunrises in Lethbridge occurring as late as 9:28 a.m. by late December.
In some northern Alberta communities, the sun won’t appear until after 10:30 a.m.
University of Lethbridge Department of Neuroscience Professor Dr. Rob McDonald said Daylight Saving Time is a social experiment our biological clocks never agreed to.
“If your social clock says you must get up at 7 a.m. and it’s completely dark outside, your internal biological clock is going to say, ‘what are you doing I have to be sleeping.’ That rich broad-spectrum light you get from the sun is very powerful for setting your biological clock and the lights in your house aren’t going to cut it,” added McDonald.
