Mensch642 asked in USMA 16293: >Joe, I surmise that the difference is LEADERSHIP! > >If President George W. Bush were to go before the Congress as he did >post-9/11 and make the Ex Cathedra statement that "the United States shall >adopt SI", then it would be done. Most Americans would see it as a >patriotic duty, were it only framed in a context of a leadership-based >initiative. It is something that, for the people of the US, I would >describe as inspiration. > >Something tells me that Canada launched its metrication program in such a >context. Am I right?
There is something in what Mensch642 says, but in reflecting on the question I think that a number of other factors were involved. Canadians have no illusions about being a World Power. Canada has a larger proportion of recent immigrants than the USA. A long list of organizations, that I listed in a previous posting, recommended that Canada should go metric. In 1970 Canada was afraid that it would be left behind if it did not go metric. India went metric in 1957, Britain started in 1965, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand had decided to change and the National Bureau of Standards had started an exhaustive study of "A Metric America: A Decision Whose Time Has Come". Finally, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, francophone, world traveller and radical thinker, although not interested in engineering matters, became Prime Minister in 1967. He certainly gave his blessing to the move to go metric. Joseph B.Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 TEL. 416-486-6071
