Changing the clocks a ‘good reminder’ to check your smoke alarms, says Waterloo Fire Rescue | CBC News
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As we spring forward for daylight time on Sunday, Waterloo Fire Rescue has updated their safety suggestions.
“Historically, fire departments would comment on daylight saving time as a good reminder to change your batteries in your smoke alarms,” said Jackson Holmes, fire prevention officer at Waterloo Fire Rescue.
“Today with the amount of hardwired smoke alarms and 10-year lithium ion batteries, it is not as relevant.”
Instead of changing batteries, Holmes said, people can still use the time shift as a yearly reminder to check your home’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to see if they’re still working.
He also said people need to make sure there’s a carbon monoxide alarm on each floor of your house.
At the start of 2026 changes were made to the Ontario Fire Code that required a working carbon monoxide alarm on every level of a residence with a gas-burning appliance, including a furnace, water heater or stove.
Is daylight time necessary?
This year’s clock change comes on the heels of B.C. Premier David Eby’s announcement that British Columbia would be moving to permanent daylight time.
“We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time — and then never again,” Eby said in a press conference on Monday.
The announcement, made less than a week before the time change, has reignited the debate about whether moving to daylight time is necessary.
Patricia Lakin-Thomas, a chronobiologist and professor from York University, agrees with Eby that switching the clocks is “outdated,” but says that B.C. should have stayed in standard time instead of switching to daylight time.
The Morning Edition – K-W7:32Why losing even 1 hour of sleep by springing ahead can be disruptive
Are you ready to lose an hour of sleep? Daylight Saving Time starts Sunday which means clocks are moving forward. Patricia Lakin-Thomas is a chronobiologist and a professor at the department of biology at York University in Toronto. She talks about B.C.’s decision to stop time changes and explains how falling back and springing ahead can impact people.
“The problem is that we need the morning light,” she Lakin-Thomas told CBC K-W’s The Morning Edition.
“We have a biological clock in our brain that gets reset by the bright sunlight in the morning … it runs a little slow and we need bright morning light to push it faster so that we stay in step with a day night cycle,” she said.
For those of us who still have a time change to look forward to each year, Lakin-Thomas gave some advice.
“Get up and get some sunlight in the morning … get all of your activities, your exercise, your morning light, your food, get them all on a regular schedule as soon as you can and try resetting all your internal clocks that way.”