The folks from there are truly downeast! Beautiful, but stark. Wonder what's up with the time zone in Nova Scotia. V's wife.
As they say on the Canadian Broadcasting network, "that's 30 minutes past the hour in New Found Land." The pronounce it that way "New Found Land".
Nova Scotia (new Latin for New Scotland. In classical Latin Scotland is Caledonia) is three and one half hours behind Greenwich, for reasons not entirely clear. As you probably know, up until 1928 New Found Land was an independent country. I suppose it was a concession so they wouldn't join the U.S.
Most countries reckon local time as an integer number of hours offset from Greenwich these days. As late as the 1880's, most every city kept their own local solar mean time. Railroads liked standard "railroad time" to simplify schedules.
Not all countries joined in the rush to reckon time based on the transit of the fictious mean sun across Airey's transit circle, as reckoned by the New Foundland born American astronomer Simon Newcomb, inventor of mean time. The more backward and politically insignificant a country the more they cleave to local standards.
Nepal, Queensland and Iran all have partial hour offsets from Greenwich. France was on Paris mean time, offset from Greenwich by 12 minutes until 1978.
New Found Land may no longer have their own currency, their own postage or a Queen's governor. But they do have their precious half hour of temporal independence.