On November 1, 2020, Yukon became the first jurisdiction anywhere on the continent in 25 years to abandon the twice yearly clock change, staying permanently on what had been Pacific Daylight Time rather than falling back that November like the rest of Canada.

The decision followed a territorial survey that found 93 percent of Yukoners wanted to end seasonal clock changes, with 70 percent of those specifically favoring permanent daylight time over permanent standard time. Implementation was not entirely seamless. A government analyst later noted that GPS controlled clocks in newer vehicles caused small headaches in the first week, since those systems pull time automatically from radio signals that had not caught up with the territory's new legal time.

The change reached beyond Yukon's own borders. Roughly 700 residents of Atlin, a small British Columbia community just across the boundary that relies heavily on Yukon for services and doctor visits, suddenly found themselves out of step with the territory next door, since Atlin remained on BC's seasonal schedule while Yukon stopped moving its clocks entirely.

A Territory Once Split by Its Own Time Zone

Long before Yukon became known for freezing its clocks, it briefly did the opposite, splitting itself into two separate time zones at once. Yukon adopted its own standard time in 1900, based on the 135th meridian west, a full nine hours behind Greenwich, and largely kept it that way for decades, including a wartime advance called Yukon War Time that ran continuously from February 1942 to September 1945.

By the mid 1960s, the territory's two halves were drifting toward different neighbors. A Commissioner's Order signed in 1967 formally split Yukon along the 138th meridian, putting the eastern portion on the same time as Pacific Standard Time to match British Columbia, while Dawson City, Old Crow, and the rest of the western portion kept the older, more easterly Yukon Standard Time.

The split did not last. On October 28, 1973, the remaining western communities gave up the old system and joined the rest of the territory on Pacific Time, unifying Yukon under a single time zone for the first time since the 1960s split, exactly the single zone system that would later be frozen in place for good by the 2020 decision.

A Federal Law That Never Caught Up

Despite everything that has changed on the ground since 1973, Canada's own federal Interpretation Act still technically defines Yukon Standard Time as nine hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, the old 135th meridian based system the territory abandoned decades ago.

Nobody has bothered to update the federal statute to reflect either the 1973 move to Pacific Time or the 2020 shift to permanent daylight time, so a plain reading of national law and the actual clock on the wall in Whitehorse have quietly disagreed with each other for more than fifty years, a gap that causes no real confusion only because territorial rules, not the old federal definition, are what anyone actually uses.

Frequently Asked Questions

What time zone is Yukon in?

Yukon follows the America/Whitehorse time zone, the official IANA identifier used by computers and databases worldwide to track local time accurately. Right now, this puts Yukon at UTC-7.

What time is it in Yukon right now?

The current local time in Yukon is 06:33:53 on Sunday, 20 September 2026. This page updates automatically, so refreshing it will always show the live time.