Canada's impetrical system
After 35 years of mixing the metric with the Imperial,
we've invented our own way
of measuring stuff May 21, 2006. 01:00 AM
Wander with us, dear
reader, as we explore the aisles of a typical grocery store this Victoria Day
weekend.
Here, you'll find Tropicana orange juice in packages of 1.89 litres or
946 ml. Or you could opt for a fancier infusion in containers of 500 ml., or
16.9 fl. oz.
And don't forget to pick up some of Newman's Own salad dressing, now in
convenient packages of 236 ml, or the Maille Dijon mustard 210 grams, or 7.4
oz., to the bottle.
But if you want waxed rutabagas, well, be prepared to fork out 59 cents a
pound.
It might be simpler just to buy the whole store, but then you'd be into
real estate, and that's square feet.
Were she ever to come back and view this Imperial/metric mess, it's
doubtful Her Majesty would be even remotely amused.
You could think of Canadian measurement as the mutant child of the metric
system. We drive in kilometres, after all, and buy gas in litres, yet still take
the measure of ourselves in pounds, feet and inches.
But it's more than that. It's cultural.
For as long as we have been a country, Canadians have always known it was
a geographical error that put the country in North America.
If geography followed sensibility, we would be somewhere in the
mid-Atlantic. (Of course, there wouldn't be any ocean left, but let's leave that
aside for now.) Our historical role has nearly always involved explaining the
world to the Americans, and vice-versa. We're used to conversing in more than
one language.
So why, really, should measurement be any different?
We can speak Imperial, which the Americans still use. The British made
Imperial their (and our) official measurement in 1824, and it spread as rapidly
as the British Empire did during Victoria's long reign.
Or we can chat away in metric, which a bunch of French Revolutionaries
dreamed up in the 1790s. (For Celsius you have to blame a Swede, circa 1742.)
But here's the thing about measurement in this country: What we've
created in true Canadian fashion isn't really bilingual measurement. It's a
bizarre hybrid that is sometimes impenetrable even for us.
If you want proof, just wander into any farm-supply outlet and try to buy
fencing material. You might have an idea of how many yards or metres you need,
but you'll have to bring a calculator along, because what you really need to
know is this: How many rods?
For those unaccustomed to Imperial's rural roots, a rod is 16 feet, 6
inches.
So if you're buying, say, a standard 80-rod roll of barbed wire, you'll
have enough for two furlongs, or a quarter mile.
Need seeds or fertilizer? You'll buy them in kilograms. But we Canadians
have always had trouble getting our heads around a hectare, which is why the
instructions that come with fertilizer now tell you to spread so many kilograms
per acre.
"We haven't sold anything in pounds for years and years and years," says
Barry Brown, a sales representative at Inland Co-operative Inc. in Grand Valley,
Ont.
But don't say that too loudly around Ed Oravec, a partner in Toronto's
Bloor Meat Market. True, he'll sell you luncheon meats in grams. But for
everything else, it's pounds and pounds and pounds.
Does anyone ever ask for kilograms?
"The odd person will come in, but they tend to be people with agendas who
want you to change and, you know, get behind Pierre Trudeau," says Oravec. "And
you know, we show them where the door is if they don't like it."
He figures pounds just make more sense in matters of weight. "People seem
to understand what it means to have a five-pound roast. They get thrown off when
you've got a 2.7 kg. roast."
Still, there are some things Oravec now finds easier to grasp in metric.
"I love kilometres," he says. "I used to think that was stupid, but I
know how far 10 kilometres is. Same thing with litres. Temperature, I think in
Celsius like everybody else."
Well, maybe not everybody else. There are people and you know who you
are who still resort to that everyday imprecision,
"Double-it-and-add-32-then-subtract-a-couple."
And we won't even talk about the lost souls who can't fathom Celsius and
now don't remember Fahrenheit either.
As Oravec remembers all too well, we owe the official metric system in this country to then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau. It was 35 years ago that he set up the Metric Commission to start converting the country. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of the planet was already metric, or heading that way as official policy. Even the Americans were talking about switching. And the scientists had always loved metric's precision. Back then, though, the debate over metric was scarcely measured. It was no place for irony or understatement. To wit, the words of Dennis Braithwaite, a columnist with this paper in 1975: "Celsius, of course, is the Judas goat that will lead us into the darkening morass of the metric system. The nation, stunned and deprived of the power to act by this fait accompli, will be thought to have little left with which to withstand the final destruction of its values." At last report, the country had not yet slipped off the edge of the Earth, but Braithwaite was on to something. Measurement is a language and language is a part of culture. You start tinkering with that everyday familiarity and people will always feel threatened. Which is why, in George Orwell's 1984, the fictional dictatorship of Oceania has naturally adopted the metric system, much to the chagrin of old-timers, including the one who causes a scene when he can't get a pint at the local pub: "Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A,B,C next." As the old man later explains: "A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my bladder running." Now, it's doubtful that John Buchanan was channelling Orwell when the Nova Scotia premier complained about the metric system in 1983, but he was in the same neighbourhood. "Did you ever look around at the countries in the world today with metric?... the socialist countries of the world today," warned Buchanan. "That's who the metric system is." Never mind that it was Sir John A. Macdonald "A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die" who in 1871 first made metric legal in Canada, as a kind of acceptable second cousin to Imperial. At the time of Buchanan's outburst, the pace of change was just becoming too fast for a lot of Canadians. Sure, we'd adopted Celsius and begun buying pre-packaged foods in metric. And road signs had all been switched, along with the odometers on new cars. But the last straw, perhaps inevitably, was the Metric Commission's 1983 deadline for bringing metric to all retail scales, most noticeably those in grocery stores. It was just too much, and by 1985, with a new Tory government running things in Ottawa, the Metric Commission was disbanded. Ever since, federal policy has been a kind of metric if necessary, but not necessarily metric. "Our current policy is that the marketplace be allowed to determine the pace of metric conversion," says Doug Hutchinson, senior program officer with Measurement Canada, the federal watchdog on weights and measures. In other words, more or less the status quo, which Laurie Hamilton and her customers deal with every day at Snappers Fish Market in Toronto. "When we buy stuff from the States, it's always in pounds," she says. "All of the fish that's imported from elsewhere organic salmon from Ireland it's all metric." Ditto Canadian sockeye salmon. Ostensibly, she sells fish in pounds, because that's what her scales measure. But she has also got a little conversion table on paper next to the scales. And does anyone ever ask for fish by the kilogram? "It's usually people who have grown up elsewhere," she says. And, increasingly, younger people who've gone through Canadian schools, where the metric system has reigned for two decades. Confusing, perhaps. But maybe we should just think of this Imperial/metric/Canadian mélange as the natural companion to the cultural diversity we Canadians tend to cherish. Which means it can sometimes get wonderfully messy out there a modern land of immigrants, reflecting the world.
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