Coral Harbour: the last time-zone hold-out

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — After so many communities rebelled against the creation of Nunavut time, one town is rebelling against its demise.

Coral Harbour has decided that it won’t adjust its clocks for daylight-saving time.

That means the community, located on Southampton Island in the eastern Kivalliq region, will spend the spring and summer on central time and next winter on eastern time.

For six months of the year, its clocks will thus be out of sync with the rest of the Kivalliq, which on April 1 will return permanently to central time.

But that’s the way it’s always been, said the community’s mayor, Johnny Ningeongan.

Coral Harbour has been ignoring daylight-saving time since well before the creation of Nunavut’s unified time zone, he said.

“We’ve never bothered changing our time. It worked out for most everybody, even though there were a few comments about not having the same time as Rankin at certain times of the year.”

According to Ningeongan, a recent survey of community members revealed that most prefer the old system: winters on eastern time, summers on central time.

“So upon the announcement of the premier, that’s going to be our intent — to not bother moving,” he said.

“We were happy with what we had.”