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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-04-18, Page 5Other Views For and against daylight saving time Easter’s just not what it used to be Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Springing ahead as part of daylight saving time (DST) is a double-edged blade in the Scott home. Yes, we lose an hour of sleep, but with the sun rising an hour later, it actually lets Mary Jane (and thus Ashleigh and me) to sleep an hour longer. I realize that, in such a microcosm, it ignores a lot of what DST accomplishes, but it does represent the outcome of the clock switch: negative and positive impacts. Apparently I’m not the only person debating its usefulness, as Ottawa Liberal MPP Marie- France Lalonde, representing Orléans, recently tabled a private members’ bill to see Ontarians “spring ahead” in March 2020 and never look back (or “fall” back, for that matter.) Ontario would be in a perpetual state of DST, resulting in, among other things, the sun never setting before the traditional workday ends. In Ottawa, for example, even during the year’s shortest day, the sun sets at 4:22 p.m. Under the change, that sunset would occur at 5:22 p.m. Lalonde cited the complications the switch creates for businesses and people, calling it an inconvenience, when speaking about the bill. However, the inconvenience of DST is only one small part of the equation, as there are many impacts, both positive and negative, that must be taken into account before the change can be made. For example, did you know that heart attacks spike on “Sleepy Monday”, the day after we “spring forward” for DST? Multiple studies have conclude that “Sleepy Monday” results in a surge of admissions at hospitals related to heart failure. One study, conducted by the University of Michigan, looked at a group of Michigan hospitals and found a 24 per cent increase in the number of heart attacks in the area. This is on top of the fact that Mondays are already the worst day for heart failure in hospitals. (Garfield was just looking out for all of us, apparently.) People spend more money during DST. A few years back, JP Morgan Chase looked at Phoenix and Los Angeles to compare the impact of DST on spending, as Los Angeles does participate in the practice while Phoenix does not. The study concluded that people spend 0.9 per cent on cards (debit or credit) at the beginning of DST, while, at the end, spending falls by 3.9 per cent. People’s circadian rhythms are upset, understandly, and, according to some studies, people start their days exhausted, but end them on a happier note. A glimpse into Facebook data shows that people use the “tired”, “exhausted” and “Sleepy” tags for their posts more on “Sleepy Monday”. As a matter of fact, in Delaware, the use of “tired” saw more than a 200 per cent increase back in 2014. That surge is offset, however, by people then being happier at the end of “Sleepy Monday” thanks to the increased time in the sun. These numbers are compared to states like Arizona and Hawaii, who don’t participate in DST, giving a good base to compare those feeling tags. Not surprisingly, missed appointments are more prevalent as a result of DST. A study completed in 2017 observed a spike of missed medical appointments after “springing ahead”. Fittingly, there was a nearly-corresponding reduction in missed appointments the Monday after falling back. DST has a significant impact on automobile collisions, both on “Sleepy Monday” and throughout DST. “Sleepy Monday” represents a marked increase in automobile collisions, with some studies saying that incidents increase as much as 16 per cent. However, throughout DST, as the sun shines longer, lighting people’s end-of- day commutes, DST has a significant beneficial impact on collisions. It’s such a huge factor that some studies have reported that, during DST from spring to fall, the extra sunlight may reduce collision fatalities by nearly 200 per cent. Like many studied situations, however, there is always some conflicting data. Different cities report negative and positive impacts to both the start and end of DST. Judges in the United States federal court system are apparently just as grumpy as the rest of us when we lose out on sleep. Researchers discovered that, on “Sleepy Monday”, judges hand out sentences that are five per cent longer than on other days. Other studies have indicated that educators and bosses are also prone to handing out harsher punishments that day. Workplace injuries spike around this time, and I’ve got to imagine, from back in my caffeine-dependent days, coffee sales are close to their highest ever (the first workdays after Christmas and New Years Eve are probably pretty popular coffee days as well). So would I be in favour of doing away with it as is suggested by Lalonde? I’m not sure. If you asked me on “Sleepy Monday”, I’d probably be in favour of it, but, any other day out of the year, it would be a decision that would need to be weighed carefully. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019. PAGE 5. Handling the truth Recently, The Citizen Publisher Deb Sholdice and I attended our provincial association’s annual conference and the standout seminar of the day dealt with the ins and outs of defamation. Legal issues are omnipresent when you’re in media. However, most members of the media, not unlike myself and Deb, are creative types, not lawyers, so knowing the law is kind of rolled into the job. For journalists, there is tremendous pressure to get it right. While we live in a world of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums and fake news websites, the legitimate news media is held to a higher standard than your average, run-of-the-mill Twitter tin foil hat-wearer. Said tin foil hat-wearing Twitter user can suggest whatever he wants. We’ve got to prove it. There is quite a weight to that. Every week, Deb, Denny and I have to be confident that what we’ve published is true and in the public interest. If we slip up in a serious way on a big enough issue with the wrong person, The Citizen will be gone – its people on the street. According to the seminar, defamation is everywhere in our newspapers. It’s a very low bar. A statement that may cause the public to think less of the subject of an article is considered defamatory. So, Denny and I are defaming people morning, noon and night. There are legal defences (Is the person a public figure? Is the statement in the public interest? etc.), but the best defence is truth. The truth, as the Bible says, will set you free. If you defame someone, but that defamation is true, that’s the subject’s problem, not yours. So, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer jab at one another, I have kept this seminar – and the power of truth – in mind. Trudeau has threatened Scheer with a lawsuit, alleging that Scheer has made “highly defamatory comments” about Trudeau and the SNC-Lavalin incident. Trudeau’s reasoning behind the lawsuit, he said, is that Scheer “can’t be lying to Canadians.” In this age of spin, fake news and Russian interference, Trudeau is absolutely right. The truth is under constant scrutiny and outright assault. Whether it’s U.S. President Donald Trump and his “alternative facts”, Premier Doug Ford and his personal cheerleader Lyndsey Vanstone and Ontario News Now or the events that are still being unpackaged that led to Brexit in the United Kingdom, truth isn’t as straightforward as it used to be. However, Trudeau needs to know that this is a bad time for him to come out as the white knight on the side of truth. What’s good for the goose, as they say, is good for the gander and Trudeau could stand to look himself in the mirror and repeat his strong words for Scheer. I have seen commentary about the SNC- Lavalin affair, which seems to keep wounding Trudeau deeper and deeper as time creeps on, suggesting that if Trudeau was upfront and transparent about the incident right off the bat, it would have fizzled out into a small pile of nothing. However, as the old saying goes, the cover-up is worse than the lie and Trudeau seems to be living that saying in real time. As conversations have taken place behind the scenes and Canadians have received news in dribs and drabs, mostly from investigative journalists, rather than from the sources themselves, we yearn for that illusive truth. So while Andrew Scheer can’t be lying to Canadians, neither can Justin Trudeau or Doug Ford or us here at The Citizen. We should all be fighting for the truth, even if it’s damning, inconvenient or troubling. The truth is the truth – and it will, indeed, set you free. Easter has always been the poor cousin of Christmas when it comes to holidays, but during my lifetime, it has faded even farther into the background. Though both holidays have their roots in Christianity, the secular trappings around Christmas have grown and grown to the point that even people from other religions tend to get wrapped up in the Santa Claus myth, the gift exchanges, the decorations and the non- religious music. There never were as many secular events surrounding Easter and over the years even those have seemed to fade. The poor old Easter Bunny never stood a chance against Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny brought candy eggs which he (she? we wouldn’t want to be sexist) hid for children. Santa brought candy and presents and as kids we could put in requests of what we hoped those presents would be. It was a lot harder to hold onto the whole idea of the Easter Bunny hiding eggs around the house once we were past the pre-school stage than it was Santa. It was worth the effort to insist we still believed in Santa even when doubts crept in, because all those presents were at stake. The Easter Bunny? Well, we’d probably get the candy for a few more years anyway. Maybe it’s just because most of my grandchildren are past the Easter Bunny stage, but to me the whole hidden eggs thing seems to be losing steam. Now and then communities hold Easter egg hunts for small children but on the whole, the tradition seems more low profile. Perhaps it’s because in times past getting candy was a special treat, while in these days of greater affluence, kids don’t need to wait for special occasions to receive treats. But the candy-hiding Easter Bunny remains downright celebrated compared to the traditional association of Easter with fashion. Apparently, according to my online research, people have been dressing up in their best clothes since the very early Easters. Some historians attribute the notion of dressing in your personal finery to the Roman Emperor Constantine I in the early 4th century, when he ordered his subjects to dress in their finest and parade in honour of Christ’s resurrection. But in popular culture, the connection of fashion to Easter dates from the 1870s and 1880s when women in New York dressed in their finest clothes, particularly hats, to attend Easter morning church services in the city’s huge churches, which had been elaborately decorated with flowers. After church, the affluent church attenders would stroll along the street to the other churches to see the decorations, showing off their finery as they walked. Poorer residents would watch the parade to pick up tips on the latest fashions – sort of like leafing through fashion magazines today or watching what celebrities are wearing to the Oscars. Merchants picked up on these parades and began advertising around the event and by 1900 Easter was as important as Christmas to retailers. Irving Berlin captured the essence of the fashion parade when he wrote Easter Parade in 1933 where he writes of a proud fellow who walks with an attractive partner in her “Easter bonnet”, admired by the crowds as they pass by. In 1948 the song was turned into a classic movie with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. The Fifth Avenue Easter Parade became so popular that an estimated one million people watched it in 1947. I grew up hearing about it on the news and being serenaded by the song. But times changed, and by 2008 only about 30,000 people attended New York’s Easter Parade. When I was young, Easter was tied to our spring school holiday, giving it a special importance. Those holidays bounced around the calendar, of course, as did Easter which is tied to the Jewish Passover which is timed to the full moon. Later, school authorities decided the week-long holidays should always come at the same time and “March break” was born. Students have less reason to get excited about Easter, anymore. And as a religious holiday in a time of declining church attendance, Easter also suffers. For those who doubt Christian teachings, it’s often still possible to accept the birth of Jesus, since many of his teachings are wise even if Christianity is rejected. Easter, with its tale of Jesus rising from the grave, is harder to accept for all but true believers. So as Easter approaches this weekend, it’s little more than a four-day long weekend for most people. Unlike Christmas, which diverts our attention from the shortest, darkest days of the year, we seldom even use the occasion of Easter to celebrate the coming of spring. Easter is special only for observant Christians, these days. They alone have as big a reason to celebrate the holiday as ever. Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk