While I appreciate that, most people don't understand this nuance,
and very few have shown any interest in learning about it. In
retrrospect, IANA has made a poor choice of naming because "America"
to most people means "USA" while "Americas" (including the final "s")
identifies the region which includes North America, Central America,
and South America. It's a point of subtle distinction that I suspect
was lost at some point, possibly by accident, and now it's coming
back to bite people.
Particularly lately, and in addition to the genuine confusion for
end-users who are continuing to experience problems with timezones
not being updated on some systems, this is also becoming an issue for
political reasons due to recent threats from America (a.k.a., USA) to
take over Canada, and it's increasingly becoming a more significant
sore spot for Canadians than it was a year ago.
I think the smartest thing that IANA can do to avoid this
controversy is to bring back the "Canada/Pacific" and other "Canada/"
timezones, because I it will probably be easier than convincing many
Americans to change "America" to "Americas."
Anyway, I'm talking with my MP about getting our timezones named so
as to create further distance from the "51st State" threats. (Yes,
I'm hostile about this situation, just in case anyone is not sure.)
> I think you misunderstand the format of the IANA time zone IDs. The first
> part indicates continent or region, not country, so America/Vancouver is the
> correct IANA time zone ID for Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver in
> Washington state is part of the America/Los_Angeles time zone.
>
> Andrew Barker
> Lead Software Developer
> SmarterTools, Inc
> 877-357-6278
> Website | Blog | X/Twitter | LinkedIn | Reddit
> Questions, comments, or suggestions? Visit the SmarterTools Community.
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
> From: "Randolf Richardson, Postmaster via mailop" <[email protected]>
> Sent: 10/9/26 7:37 AM
> To: [email protected],"Scott Q." <[email protected]>
> Subject: [mailop] Re: Google internal delivery delay (Canadian timezones
> differ from American timezones)
>
> We've seen delays on Google's SMTP infractrcture intermittently, but
>
> usually not more than 10 minutes.
>
> The two "Received:" SMTP headers you included show the same times,
>
> but appear different due to being in different timezones.
>
> There is a lot of confusion lately with Pacific Time, however,
>
> becuase in Canada we changed from PDT/PST to PCT (which means that
>
> British Columbia {mostly} doesn't need to adjust our clocks two times
>
> each year anymore).
>
> What's made this confusing is that the "Canada/Pacific" timzone was
>
> removed, with some people recommending using "America'Vancouver"
>
> (even though we're not in Vancouver, Washington, USA, which will be
>
> adjusting their clocks from PDT to PST on 2026-Nov-01 whlie we won't
>
> be doing this here in Cnada).
>
> Some software is supporting this change, while other software is
>
> not, as the American "Vancouver" is incorrectly assumed authoritative
>
> for Candaa (which it isn't).
>
> Enter the ISO: Apparently they solved this problem, but I'm not
>
> seeing that solution working in the field, and I'm not looking
>
> forward to having to deal with end users with messed up timezones
>
> calling because they think their time is right and everyone else's is
>
> wrong.
>
> I believe the ISO should be supporting the "Canada/Pactific' and
>
> other "Canada/" timezones as this wlil properly resolve the problem
>
> since American timezones are different from Canadian timezones
>
> ("America/" is not the same as "Americas/" just in case anyone misses
>
> the subtle distinction indicated by the final letter "s" -- "America"
>
> is the USA, while "Americas" is the continential region).
>
> In summary, the confusion with timing could be due to the current
>
> mess with the timezones if any part of the systems are converting
>
> between Canadian and American timezones.
>
> > Anyone else received reports of delayed messages from Google and the
>
> > headers show delays within Google's infrastructure ? We got quite a
>
> > few this week with delays ranging from 5 minutes to 35+ minutes.
>
> >
>
> > Sample headers:
>
> >
>
> > X-Received: by 2002:a05:690e:1249:b0:671:70d2:528c with SMTP id
>
> > 956f58d0204a3-6790a24f8dfmr4281358d50.79.1791485476106;
>
> > Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:51:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > Received: by mail-oa1-f69.google.com with SMTP id
>
> > 586e51a60fabf-46a4168b520so6111766fac.2
>
> > for ; Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:59:17 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > Received: from mail-oa1-f69.google.com (mail-oa1-f69.google.com
>
> > [209.85.160.69])
>
> > by mx.emailarray.com (Haraka/3.2.0) with ESMTPS id
>
> > 412697C7-0042-4C4F-B15C-1B1869CE5EFE.1
>
> > envelope-from
>
> > tls TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384;
>
> > Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:59:17 -0600
>
> >
>
> > Thanks,
>
> > Scott
>
> >
>
> --
>
> Postmaster - [email protected]
>
> Randolf Richardson, CNA - [email protected]
>
> Inter-Corporate Computer & Network Services, Inc.
>
> Vancouver, Beautiful British Columbia, Canada
>
> https://www.inter-corporate.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> mailop mailing list -- [email protected]
>
> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
--
Postmaster - [email protected]
Randolf Richardson, CNA - [email protected]
Inter-Corporate Computer & Network Services, Inc.
Vancouver, Beautiful British Columbia, Canada
https://www.inter-corporate.com/
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