Karl G. Ruling asked in USMA 8812: >Can anyone give me a quick summary on the state of metrification in Canada? >I know that some Canadians continue to talk of feet and inches, but is >everything officially supposed to be measured in SI, or is there dual >labeling or certain market sectors where colonial units are still allowed? The split is roughly between the university-educated and the rest. Engineering is metric, medicine is metric, science is metric, government is metric, education is entirely metric, commercial construction is metric. Retail scales are largely metric. Standards are largely metric. Highways are metric. Weather is metric. Canadian Press translates into metric most of its news despatches from American sources. Packaged food is metric, and increasingly hard metric. Clothing patterns and fabric sales are metric. Some delikatessens sell by 100 grams. But house construction is imperial. Retail hardware and lumber is predominantly imperial. Personal height, except on drivers' licences and medical records, is in feet asnd inches. Personal mass (which is universally called weight) is popularly in pounds. Unpackaged or loose food is almost universally priced by the pound, although weighed at the check-out counter in kilograms. People over 35 tend to think in imperial. The subject is not a matter of popular interest or political discussion or argument.
