This weekend, Daylight Saving Time begins with the moving of the clocks forward one hour at 2 a.m. early Sunday morning. 

 In Morden, the historical clock tower has played a role in keeping time in the community and has a history of those who have made sure it did just that.

 Laverne Lovatt has lived in Morden for 35 years, and took over the job of winding Morden’s clock tower from longtime resident, Frank Isaac.

 Lovatt said he volunteered to do it, and said it was quite the work out.

 “I started going up there and winding it. Once a week, going up there and giving it however many cranks it needed to bring the weights to the top. It's a good workout in   summer and winter. You’d go up there in the summer and it would be quite warm and you’d go up in the winter and it would be just the very opposite and quite cold.”

 Lovatt noted although the clock on the corner of Stephen St and 8th has been wound by volunteers for many years, after he finished his time of service it was taken over by   the, then, Town of Morden and remains the job of a city employee to take care of each week.

 “Interesting because it's time change, that used to be quite the thing, 'cause this is the easy time of year to change the time 'cause you just move it forward the one hour.   When you're moving it backward, the way the clock is made, you have to go right around eleven hours, and hopefully you can make it so that the clock doesn't chime every   time you go past the hour, ‘cause you can't roll a clock backwards. It's the way the mechanism works, and I only knew that because I had a small clock that was fixed and   the guy said, ‘Never take a clock backwards.”

 Long before Lovatt was the keeper of the clock, Danny Dack, of Dack’s Pharmacy located beside the clock tower, committed to the role in 1970 after bringing the chime   back into working order. An employee of his, Frank Isaac, took on the added responsibility because, according to his daughter Ruth Isaac, he loved his community.

“My dad was a very quiet man and a man of few words. He loved Morden. Morden was his hometown. This was something he was so proud to do. He was proud to be from Morden and every time he heard the clock chime, he was so excited.”

For over two decades, Frank made sure the clock was wound each week, and Ruth expressed how proud she was of him. 

Submitted photo by Ruth Isaac of Frank Isaac winding the clock tower, from The Pembina Times article by Reg Clayton from April 21, 1987

“It was exciting for us as a family. My brother and I, we could have the opportunity to go up sometimes. It was a long ladder, it was going up right to the top and we got to go up, right to the top to where he was winding it, and we could look over Morden and we felt we were on top of the world.”

Ruth recalled her dad was always on time.

“We were always the first people to church and were the first people to leave. He was always on time. It was very important. He was always checking his watch.” She emotionally continued, “He wore his watch until the day he passed away and I took it off, and I’m wearing his watch now.”

While many people will wake up tomorrow to digital clocks that will need a click of a few buttons, and many others will have relied on their phone providers to take care of the change for them, the history of the clock tower still remains in many communities across Canada thanks to those past, present and future who have preserved the clock tower landmark and get excited every time they hear it chime.

Susan Crawford-Young has a display of pictures in the Pembina Hills Art Gallery she took back in 2010, of the cogs and weights that keep the iconic tower on time. Below are a few of those pictures.