Daylight saving time changes in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Newfoundland and Labrador uses the IANA time zone identifier America/St_Johns. The current local offset is UTC-2:30 / NDT.

Best Time to Call Newfoundland and Labrador

Business hours in Newfoundland and Labrador (9 AM-5 PM local time) fall at these local times elsewhere:

• Sao Paulo: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM ( Convenient)
• Frankfurt: 1:30 PM - 9:30 PM ( Partial overlap)
• Johannesburg: 1:30 PM - 9:30 PM ( Partial overlap)
• Singapore: 7:30 PM - 3:30 AM (next day) ( Partial overlap)
• Hong Kong: 7:30 PM - 3:30 AM (next day) ( Partial overlap)
• Istanbul: 2:30 PM - 10:30 PM ( Partial overlap)
• Auckland: 12:30 AM (next day) - 8:30 AM (next day) ( Outside normal hours)

Times shown reflect current UTC offsets and may shift by up to an hour around daylight saving transitions.

Current Time in Cities of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

About Time in Newfoundland and Labrador

Firing the Noon Gun

Before reliable pocket watches and clocks became common, officials in St. John's, along with counterparts in Halifax, Quebec City, and Ottawa, kept the public informed of the correct time by firing a cannon at exactly noon each day, a signal anyone in earshot could set their own timepiece against.

That era of city by city local solar time, each place keeping its own noon by the position of the sun overhead, is the backdrop against which Newfoundland's unusual half hour offset eventually took shape. St. John's sat close enough to the 52.5 degree west meridian that its own local time never lined up neatly with any full hour zone, and the noon gun tradition reflects just how locally determined timekeeping still was in the decades before standardization.

Legislating the Half Hour

The half hour offset became law in 1935, when Newfoundland's Commission of Government, the unelected body Britain had installed after the dominion's financial collapse, passed the Standard Time Act. The law fixed standard time across the dominion at exactly three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, chosen specifically to track St. John's own solar time as closely as possible rather than rounding to a neighboring full hour zone.

When Newfoundland joined Canadian Confederation on April 1, 1949, it brought this pre existing time zone into the country intact rather than adopting Atlantic Standard Time like the rest of the Maritimes. The half hour offset survived confederation not because Canada designed it that way, but because Newfoundland had already been running on it as an independent dominion for over a decade and simply kept doing so.

Twice Rejected, and Now One of Just Eleven

Newfoundland's government tried twice to give up the half hour offset and fall in line with Atlantic Canada. A 1951 proposal to switch to Atlantic Standard Time met vehement public opposition and was abandoned before it could take effect. A second attempt in 1963 aimed at the same goal, hoping to simplify business and broadcast coordination with the rest of Atlantic Canada, ran into the same wall of public resistance and was also dropped.

Newfoundland did not start out alone in using this particular offset. Uruguay kept the same UTC minus 3:30 standard time until 1942, when it moved back to a full hour offset, and Suriname used it until 1984, when it moved forward instead. With both of those countries gone, Newfoundland time is left as one of just eleven time zones remaining anywhere in the world that differ from UTC by something other than a whole hour, a distinction that has grown rarer with each passing decade rather than more common.

A Province Split Between Two Clocks

Newfoundland and Labrador is not actually on one time zone at all. The island of Newfoundland keeps Newfoundland Time, but most of mainland Labrador, from Cartwright northward through communities like Hopedale and Nain, runs on ordinary Atlantic Time instead, the same zone used across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.

Only the southeastern corner of Labrador, stretching from L'Anse au Clair up through Red Bay, Mary's Harbour, and Lodge Bay as far as Black Tickle, keeps Newfoundland Time along with the island. The boundary is not an accident of surveying but a product of daily life: these southeastern communities have long depended on radio broadcasts, ferry connections, and general orientation toward Newfoundland island rather than toward the Labrador mainland or the rest of Atlantic Canada, and their clocks reflect exactly which direction their daily lives actually point.

Frequently Asked Questions