Dream 21 "Standard Time" (Sir Sandford Fleming, 1878)

Fleming dreamed the Institute loved his idea — wanted, in fact, to take his logic a few steps further and set the clocks back an entire 50 years. And so the City hired bricklayers to take apart all the new buildings: homes and churches and stores were turned into rubble and dust; their predecessors were rebuilt in their place. The sidewalks were pulled up by carpenters; Yonge and King and Queen Streets were returned to muddy glory. Fleming himself helped to disassemble his own railway, taking a great iron hammer to the rails. The debris was used to fill quarries back in; they were then covered with dirt and re-sodded. Trees were planted and roads were undone. Creeks were unburied and brooks let loose.

Once everything had been put back in its place, the young people hid themselves away. Most of them vanished into the ravines. Some disappeared into basements or backyard shacks. Others set off on ships to make a new life for themselves in the Old World.

As the last of the sails dipped below the lake’s blue horizon, a great cheer went up in the city. That night, the elderly would go dancing. Get drunk. Make out with strangers. Fall in love.

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Sir Sandford Fleming was one of Canada's greatest inventors and engineers. He helped to plan our earliest railroads, designed our first postage stamp and co-founded the Royal Canadian Institute to promote Canadian science. In the 1870s, he proposed a new system for the world's time: a universal 24-hour clock divided into local time zones. It would become the standard for measuring time all over the world.

You can read more about Sir Sandford Fleming on Wikipedia here. Explore more Toronto Dreams Project postcards here.