Converting python datetime to timestamp and back in UTC still uses local timezone

To get a naive datetime object that represents time in UTC from “seconds since the epoch” timestamp:

from datetime import datetime

utc_dt = datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts)

If you want to get an aware datetime object for UTC timezone:

import pytz

aware_utc_dt = utc_dt.replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc)

To convert it to some other timezone:

tz = pytz.timezone('America/Montreal')
dt = aware_utc_dt.astimezone(tz)

To convert the timestamp to an aware datetime object in the given timezone directly:

dt = datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz)