Town In Its Own Time Zone Creston, B.C., Can’t Be Bothered With Newfangled Daylight Time

Throughout the United States and Canada today, most people will reset watches, fax machines and those blasted VCR clocks.

But not in Creston.

This British Columbia burg of 5,000, just across the Idaho border, remains in a time warp.

Folks in the city and surrounding valley don’t observe daylight-saving time and never have.

There’s pride in being known as the land that “forgot time,” says Mayor Lela Irvine.

Residents have fought attempts and voted down referendums to get them to set their clocks with the rest of the nation.

“People don’t realize we are the consistent ones. Everyone else is screwed up,” said Maryjane Stoltenberg, smiling behind the counter of Countrywide Realty. “I have a 4-1/2-year-old. This way it doesn’t mess up his schedule or bedtime.”

For as long as townsfolk remember, Creston has bucked the twice-a-year time change. Residents even used the excuse that it would utterly confuse the cows, which are milked twice a day on a regular time schedule.

“Time has never changed here,” said 64-year resident Ed Gatzke while getting a trim at Lloyds Barber Shop. “When everyone else decided to go on daylight-saving time, we didn’t. And as far as I’m concerned it works just beautiful. There are still the same number of hours in a day.”

Being a maverick of time isn’t always easy. Creston residents do much of their business, visit doctors and catch planes in Cranbrook, about 65 miles east.

Cranbrook is in a different time zone altogether. So half of the year Creston and Cranbrook are on the same time, the other half of the year Creston is an hour behind.

The cities would actually be two hours apart half the year, but Creston found a unique way to jump between the Pacific and Mountain time zones, or what locals call the “twilight zone.”

This week, the provincial government will move the time zone marker west of Creston. That puts them in the Mountain Time Zone. In the spring, the marker is yanked up and moved east of town, plopping Creston back into the Pacific Time Zone.

“Because we are so bent on not changing time, that’s what they have to do. I find it ridiculous. It confuses a lot of people,” said resident Carole Speaker. “I know more than one person who has missed a plane because of it. And in the summer it’s dark at 5 p.m. and daylight at 4 a.m. Who wants daylight then?”

Speaker and teacher Glen Whitehead are part of a group that’s pushed for five years to change the time. Neither clocks nor most residents have budged.

“We like it this way,” said clothes-store owner Sarah Kastelan. “If an hour more of sun in the summer is that important to some people, then they should get up earlier.”

If the time ever did change, Kastelan vows to keep her store on the traditional Creston clock.

“There is no logical reason as to why we do it, and I’ve never heard an explanation that makes sense,” says Barbara Chilson, branch manager for the Bank of Montreal. “We are so used to it that most of us don’t think anything of it. It’s really not a problem.”

It’s the little hassles that annoy Whitehead most. Students walk home in the dark, there’s not enough daylight for flag football games after work and golfers are hard-pressed to play 18 holes before dusk.

Then there’s getting across the border at Porthill, Idaho. The customs office is only open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., but the office operates on daylight-saving time.

The more you think about it, the more confusing it gets, said Whitehead.

“There’s a large population of seniors here and they don’t like change. Their attitude is if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” he said. “But I maintain if they would try it for a year, they would never go back.”

Every few years, Mayor Irvine said, a spat erupts about time. Some want to join Cranbrook in the Mountain Time Zone. Others want to honor daylight-saving time. But most just want naysayers to keep their hands off Creston’s clocks.

“Most of us understand it and have learned to live with it,” Irvine said. “Most like being the little valley that has its own time zone.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map of Creston area