Daylight Saving Time in Manitoba

2024 schedule

Manitoba keeps CST in winter and shifts one hour forward for the summer.

Time until the next change

Current local time:

Technology and Time Changes in 2024

Phones, computers and anything else that syncs with an internet time server handle the transition on their own. What still catches people out in Manitoba is the long tail of devices that don't: car dashboards, ovens and microwaves, wall clocks, older thermostats, and cheap alarm clocks with a DST setting hard-coded to a schedule that has since changed.

For anyone running servers, the transitions are a recurring source of bugs — duplicated or missing local timestamps around the changeover, cron jobs that fire twice or not at all, and stale operating system timezone databases. Storing timestamps in UTC and keeping the tzdata package current avoids almost all of it.

Agricultural Considerations

The story that DST was introduced for farmers has it exactly backwards. Farmers in Manitoba and elsewhere were among its most persistent opponents, and the American farm lobby successfully campaigned to have national DST repealed after the First World War.

The reason is straightforward: farm work follows the sun, not the clock. Moving the clock forward just means doing the same work an hour earlier by the clock, while deliveries, markets and hired labour all shift with it. Dairy farmers make the point most often, since cows keep to their own schedule and take several days to adjust to a changed milking time.

Getting ready

• Take advantage of the 'extra' hour in fall to catch up on sleep or tackle a project.
• Gradually adjust your sleep schedule a few days before the time change to minimize disruption.
• Remember that not all countries change on the same date - check international meeting times carefully.
• Consider the time change when scheduling meetings with people in other time zones.