I'm far from Canadian, I'm from South Mississippi in the USA.

To attempt to answer your question, adjusting timing officially requires a timing strobe light and other stuff. Well, I grew up in a junkyard and learned how to hear and feel it out.

Different times back then, when it was as simple as twisting the distributor a few degrees ±

It really wasn't much different than adjusting the timing on a watch, just ... different ...

Mama's old '94 Nissan Sentra runs like a racecar after I tweaked the timing, it was probably about 1.8⁰ delayed before.