The night before time change happens, most people probably spend a few minutes adjusting the digital clocks on the microwave and stove and then head off to sleep. But for one local clock collector, time change has a different meaning.

Bonnie Stanwick loves her clocks, all 30, 40, 50 of them. She has so many clocks, she has lost count.

And when we change our clocks in spring and fall, Stanwick says it is a bit of a production in her home.

A gift from her mother 35 years ago, this schoolhouse clock is a favourite of Bonnie Stanwick's. (Photo submitted)

“Anything digital that’s a clock in this house, my husband looks after,” Stanwick says, “because to me, they’re not a clock.”

All the other clocks though, she oversees adjusting them and sometimes, instructions are required.

It can be quite an ordeal and Stanwick admits that some of them do not get adjusted for time change, she simply allows them to be an hour off for a few months, until the time change happens, again.

How much time does she spend changing the time on her clocks?

“It doesn’t take that long, once I get going,” she says. “It makes me crazy simply because I’m too much of a control freak in the fact that I need them all to be so precise. And it makes me crazy when I’m not getting the same time on each one of them. Because some of them are old, and so they’re a little slower than they should be, some of them are faster than they should be, so there’s always that, too.”

Why does she have so many clocks?

Stanwick says she inherited her love of clocks from her mom. In fact, her favourite clock was a gift from her mother, around 35 years ago.

“Simply because she bought it. She put so much thought into it, and I knew she did. And I love the tone,” says Stanwick, adding that the tone is everything.

Anytime her mom would find a clock that she loved, Stanwick says she would make sure that each of the children would get a clock that was very similar to prized clock her mother had found.

And now, Stanwick has passed on the love of clocks to her son. For her 50th birthday, he went to the store and listened to each clock chime before he picked the best sounding clock for her. When she talks about the sound of each clock, you can hear her passion for every sound her clocks make.