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This article looks at the most significant public debate over time in Montreal's history: the beginnings of daylight saving time (1907-1928). Seeing daylight saving time as an example of the disembedding of time from place, the article demonstrates the importance of local social dynamics in the creation of meanings of modernity. Daylight saving time began as an idea to save money and improve people's lives, though it was ridiculed until the First World War, when it was put in place in Montreal and much of North America and Europe. Yet after the war, it was rejected as a national measure, and subsequently much of North America and eventually even the Island of Montreal turned into a patchwork of time zones. The article argues that the difficult beginnings of daylight saving time in Montreal were due to the unequal benefits of changing the clock, rural-urban tensions, the Canadian federal system, conflicts between ethno-religious institutions, Montreal's tenacious mayor, and the economic power of businesses to shape time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]