Enjoy the sun and give thanks where it’s due

There aren’t many times I’d say this – in fact, I can’t think of a single other time I’d say this — but I’d like to go on the record right now. Thank you, George Walker Bush.

The current president of the United States, commander in chief of the most powerful army on the planet, so-called leader of the so-called free world, Mr. Bush seems to get precious few thanks any more. He has become, to put it kindly, something of a figure of fun. He’s savagely lampooned by the left, treated as the lamest of ducks by the mainstream media, and even ignored by the Republicans who seek to succeed him.

The main debate about his presidency seems to be whether he was merely a poor president, or whether he can claim the title as the very worst president ever. His legacy will include the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, the misery of New Orleans and the chaos of a battered economy.

Amid such a presidential train wreck, it seems impossible to find anything that is worth celebrating. And yet there are indeed some bright points. His AIDS policy in Africa has been truly remarkable, for example. Under Bush’s leadership, the U.S. has invested billions of dollars to make AIDS and HIV medication available, and saved tens of thousands of lives.

Closer to home, we have Mr. Bush to thank for the change to daylight saving time.

Mr. Bush didn’t invent DST, of course. It was suggested by Benjamin Franklin, championed by Sandford Fleming, and finally adopted as a temporary war measure in the early years of World War One. It apparently worked well, too — a few months after Germany adopted it as a way to save precious wartime energy, Britain followed suit on the other side of the trenches. It became a permanent addition to most of North America in the 1940s, and since then we’ve sprung forward and fallen back in April and November, moving clocks on the first Sunday of each month.

Last year, President Bush tweaked the plan. In 2007, DST began on the second Sunday in March and ended on the second Sunday in November, adding a full four weeks to summer sun time.

Like most things any U.S. president has ever done, the move was not universally popular. One website sums up its members’ views with a discussion forum called “New daylight savings time sucks!”

People who go to work early in the morning seem to hate it the most. By early March they’ve just started to see a glimmer of daylight as they’re leaving the house, only to be thrust back into dark mornings for a few more weeks.

It’s hardly surprising that some people dislike the new system, for the very concept of daylight saving time has its detractors. Novelist, editor and overall curmudgeon Robertson Davies hated it. He said he could detect in it “the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”

I’ve never thought of myself as having a puritanical streak, but I love the arrival of daylight saving time. And now that it arrives in March, I love it even more.

It’s not that I have a compulsion to be up before the sun. In summer, I’m more than happy to sleep until the sun is high in the sky. But summer daylight is like a politician’s promise, a commodity so abundant that we can seize or ignore it at will.

In mid-winter, on the other hand, the days are so short that it makes little difference when the sun rises. We go to work in the dark, return home in the dark, and exist solely on memories of summer and glimpses of a watery sun caught on weekends.

What hurts is waking in the March sunshine, knowing that it will be dark again by 6 p.m. Anything we want to do after work — road hockey, barbecuing or a quick trip to the ice hut — has to be done by artificial light.

Since last year we’ve only had to put up with a week of that before daylight saving time kicked in.

Regardless of whether the new plan saves any energy, in Muskoka it makes for a good month. March is now a time to get outside after work and enjoy the last of winter, to feel the warming sun on our faces and anticipate the arrival of spring.

I didn’t fully appreciate it last year, but this year I am savouring it. And sometime in the month I plan to offer a silent toast to the man who made it possible: I shall stand outside with a glass of wine and toast George Bush.

I shall do it by the light of the setting sun. Given the arc of his political career, it seems only appropriate.