During the early 1900's, a local story featured in a Reader’s Digest column on "Small Town Ontario" focused on Dan Macintyre, who was, for many years in the early 1900's, the janitor for the Town of Forest. Dan had three main responsibilities.

One was to sweep the streets and we must remember that a lot of people still used horses then. The second was to keep the town hall clean. The third was to ring the town bell each morning at 7:00 AM to wake the town; at 8:00 AM to signal the start of work in the basket and canning factories; at 12:00 and 12:30 to signal the beginning and the end
of lunch; and at 5:00 PM to signal the end of the work day.

When Mr. MacIntyre was asked by the writer how he could be sure he had the right time on his inexpensive watch when he rang the bell, he said that he checked and reset the time on his watch at quarter to seven each morning by checking the clock in the window at Van Valkenburg Jewelers, just a block from the Forest Town Hall. When the writer visited the jeweler and asked how they knew that their clock in the window showed the right time, he was told that they checked and if necessary, reset their clock each day at noon when the bell rang. For all we know, Forest might have been operating on their own time zone for many years.