Last data update: March 16, 2010
Last page update: March 16, 2010
The tz_canada shapefile captures the TZ timezones of Canada, as of TZ 2010e.
The geometries are primarily derived from the fip10s layer, which is in turn primarily based on the VMAP0 polbnda layer. The sources of the intra-provinces boundaries are described below.
All the TZ timezones of Canada listed in TZ’s zone.tab are represented. In addition, we elected to retain America/Coral_Harbour as a geographical timezone.
This is a snaphsot of the shapefile (many of the smaller zones are not visible at this scale):
Chris Walton describes the area around Creston as follows:
Please note that to the best of my knowledge, there is no official set of boundaries for the time zone areas in BC.
Some of the paper road maps published by non-government sources have time zone boundaries... but the zone boundaries vary from one map to the next. The area around Creston is generally ignored altogether.
One must keep in mind that much of interior BC is rugged and mountainous with few roads and few people. Time may have no meaning if you are in the middle of nowhere!
Here are some notes about the boundaries I plotted:
- In places where maps do agree, it is clear that time zone boundaries tend to follow mountain ranges (i.e. drainage basin boundaries).
- Sometimes (but not always) the boundaries coincide with municipal district boundaries; where this happens it is easy to plot an accurate line.
- www.milebymile.com lists a number of points where time zone signs are posted; I tried to make the boundaries cross at these points. I am fairly confident that the area I plotted around Creston crosses highway 3 at the correct locations.
- Where possible I tried to make the boundaries agree with the National Research Council Maps... but the resolution of these maps is too low to be able to pull accurate information.
- Where possible I made the boundaries agree with paper road maps.
- I made the boundary follow the eastern edge of Glacier National Park even though most paper road maps show the park divided into two; the park definitely operates on Pacific Time, and there is supposedly a time zone sign just east of the park.
- I had no good data for the western boundary of the Creston area southwest of Kooteney Lake other than the fact that there is supposedly a time zone sign along highway 3 at the top of the Salmo-Creston mountain pass. I tried to make the line follow the mountains and avoid crossing any roads other than Highway 3... but with the latest Google Earth imagery, it appears my line crosses a number of logging roads. I believe I need to move the line about 10km west and make it pass through Ripple Mountain; this puts all logging roads east of Ripple Mountain on Creston Time and all logging roads west of Ripple Mountain on Vancouver Time. The theory is that loggers working east of Ripple Mountain must come from Creston and the loggers working west of Ripple Mountain must come Salmo because the roads don't cross the mountain; and we assume that loggers don't change their watches everytime they go into the woods to cut down a tree.
America/St_Johns, America/Goose_Bay: the boundary between the two is approximately that shown at http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/Magazine/SO98/alacarte.asp. Data provided by Chris Walton. Chris writes: The boundary between Atlantic Time and Newfoundland Time is somewhat arbitrary and to the best of my knowledge is not published in any detail on any government issued maps. This is rugged terrain with very few people. I placed Cartwright and the Cartwright airport are on Atlantic Time and Paradise River on Newfoundland time which I believe to be correct.
The Saskatchewan Time Act provides for various areas, in particular school divisions (before their reorganization) to choose their time.
The zip of the ingredients contains a set of source shapefiles and a script to build the final map from them.
We have a separate shapefile for each province. In each shapefile, we capture the timezone boundaries internal to the province. The idea is that those shapefiles can be combined with various base shapefiles providing the provincial boundaries. (The particular problem we want to solve is that Canada has many islands, and we prefer to not have to worry about those and the provinces they are in when dealing with timezones).
To the extent possible under law, Eric Muller has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the efele.net/tz maps (comprising the shapefiles, the web pages describing them and the scripts and data used to build them).
This work is published from the United States of America.
Note that this does not affect the rights others may have. I am not qualified to determine whether such rights exist.
History: