Before I begin…let’s do something together… grab your wallet and take out your driver’s licence.
Mine says that I am 184 centimetres in height…But maybe you’re like me and instead say that you’re six-foot-one.
It also says I’m 97 kilograms but if asked… all I know is that I am 215 pounds.
While it may seem like I refuse to adhere to the metric system, that isn’t the case.
I measure distances in kilometres, and I pay by the litre when I fill up my car.
But then something funny happens…
I will set my thermometer in my apartment to 19 degrees Celsius but cook my turkey at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, what’s going on?
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx!
Today, we investigate our adherence or lack thereof to the metric system!
Nearly every country uses the metric system for official measurements because it is ordered and defined.
It’s designed to be simple, consistent, and easy to convert between units because it is based on powers of ten, which makes converting between units straightforward.
10 millimetres in a centimetre, 100 centimetres in a metre, and 1000 metres in a kilometre.
It just makes sense you just move the decimal point.
It was developed during the 18th century to create a standardized form of measurement.
Compare that to the imperial measurements.
12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, and 1,760 yards in a mile.
Why is that?
According to legend, a yard was based on the distance between the nose and the outstretched thumb of King Henry I in the 12th century.
The foot was the size of a human foot.
Since that varied widely, it was standardized in 1324 by King Edward II of England who decreed that a foot would equal 12 inches.
And an inch was to be three barleycorns in length.
The mile? That comes from the distance a Roman legion marched in 1,000 double steps, known as mille pasus.
You see…it was absolute chaos.
So, by the mid-19th century, the metric system was slowly adopted by a growing number of countries.
In Canada, the government legalized the metric system in the 1870s, but it did not enforce its use.
As a result, for the next century, Canadians continued to use yards, pounds and gallons.
But then, thousands of new immigrants arrived at our shores to settle the west and brought with them the metric system.
Except in their new home, they had to start using Imperial.
One resident of Eye Hill, Saskatchewan said,
“I was pleased to measure my waist in inches rather than centimetres, but I found the Fahrenheit temperatures difficult to comprehend. Measuring temperature in centigrade seems so much more logical in having water freeze at 0 degrees and boil at 100. At least the use of dollars and cents made sense to me.”
It took a long time but by the 1960s, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan observed humans were destined for global connections.
McLuhan was the original Mr. Worldwide because he saw how telephones, television and radio, along with the growth of international trade, made the world smaller.
He even coined the term “global village”.
And for things to work in the future, things had to be standardized, including measurements.
The UK, Canada and the United States seemed to be lagging as they held on to the Imperial System while the rest of the world had gone metric.
In Canada, some places made the early shift.
Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children was the first to adopt the metric system because. many academic journals were already using it, and it made sense for doctors and others in the medical profession to do the same.
By 1969, over 200 other hospitals had made the switch.
With the end of the Swinging 60s, the Canadian government decided to lean in and follow suit.
The Imperial System era was coming to an end in the Great White North.
First, the Canadian government commissioned a white paper on metric conversion in Canada.
Published in January 1970 by the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, it firmly made the case for conversion by stating “It is no longer possible to suspend judgement on the question of metric conversion. The economic well-being of Canada depends crucially on education, industrial development and world trade. Metric conversion can benefit them all.”
After the report was released, the government passed the Weights and Measures Act to begin the process of shifting towards the metric system.
It also created the Metric Commission which oversaw the entire metrification of Canada through 100 sector committees that would monitor its progress.
The government knew that a sudden change would be too.
Canadians would be eased into change over a decade with an end goal set between1980 to 1981.
The commission quickly began a major advertising push to educate Canadians and prepare them for the change.
Domtar Fine Papers out of Montreal issued posters that featured Buffy, the Metric Miss.
These posters have not aged well.
Buffy was portrayed by a model, shown in a provocative manner, as her body measurements were listed in both metric and imperial.
Domtar’s Ontario Sales Manager, M.A. McDonald, stated that the posters were teasers designed to get people involved in the metric conversion.
Other ads focused on temperatures.
They appeared in newspapers and magazines and stated 30 degrees Celsius was perfect for a swim, while -20 degrees Celsius was so cold that the snow squeaks.
Jumping onboard the metric train benefited paper and printing companies like Domtar.
The company was founded in Canada in 1929 and by 1975, it was one of the largest in the country making multi-million-dollar expansions in various factories across Quebec and Ontario.
But despite the marketing campaign resistance began almost immediately.
Letters to the editor typically focused on the cost and confusion over the change and a preference to stay in line with the United States’ Imperial system.
There was little convincing of older generations, so the focus was on young people.
The Metric Commission was able to reach agreements with the provinces to teach metric to students in the early-1970s.
Various schools attempted to make the transition easier and fun for students.
At West Humber Junior School in Etobicoke, Ontario, principal Fred Willson took a vacant classroom and turned it into what became known as Metric Mansion where students were encouraged to think metric.
Songs about the metric system were performed, games were played and children were taught how to use metric rulers.
J.M. Bell, the metrification coordinator for the Department of Education in Ontario, said the province was all-in quote.
“Some teachers are very enthusiastic and going ahead completely on their own. Little fires are being lit all over the province.”
As expected, children adapted quickly to the change, while adults continued to resist.
The Waterloo County Board of education offered two night-school classes in late-1974 and only 12 people registered for the course on metrification which was far less than what organizers hoped.
Some felt, in the words of Grandpa Simpson, that the metric system was the tool of the devil.
An editorial in the Cariboo Observer stated that the metric conversion was a quote,
“Diabolical plot perpetrated many years ago by men of science.”
The Cold War was raging at the time, so many believed the conversion to metric was Canada sliding into the most dreaded of all words…communism!
By 1975 the first major change was at hand.
Many believed the switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius would not work a country where winter lasted for months.
Louise Thomson, a lecturer at the University of Ottawa, said,
“It’s too claustrophobic, you need more than that. Before, if you went minus 10 times a year, you could stick out your chin and hold on. But being minus all winter is too negative.”
Percy Saltzman, an Ontario TV meteorologist, was even more vocal in his hatred of Celsius when he said,
“They wanted us all to be bilingual, and now they want us to be trilingual. I recognize the inevitability of it, but I don’t enjoy it. I shall go to my grave protesting loudly.”
Another columnist in Ontario, Bill Smiley, stated,
“I deeply resent simply being told by some Ottawa ostriches and their stooges in the media that I must, willy-nilly, switch to Celsius thermometer and metric weights and measures.”
But change happens whether you want it to or not and on April 1, 1975, Canada turned from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
It was not an April Fool’s Joke. 32 degrees was no longer the freezing point of water, now…it was zero degrees.
With that change, only Yemen, Burma and the United States remained on Imperial Island… England is kind of like us… barely holding on but the temperature change in 1975 was like mixed precipitation… hot, cold and all over place.
The transition was bumpy because not all-weather stations got their new thermometers in time.
10,000 were ordered two years earlier, but only 2,000 had arrived by the time the government wanted all thermometers replaced in 1975.
Folks would have until the end of the year and there was such a rush by Canadians to buy metric thermometers that stores quickly ran out.
Change was coming for those who wanted it or not and one letter to the editor in Red Deer, Alberta, from an individual calling themselves Confused stated,
“The fact that God has control over weather conditions is irrelevant, as moving from Fahrenheit to Celsius will neither affect God or the weather.”
The change was welcomed by many new Canadians.
Yeghia Benedjiklian, who arrived from Egypt in 1968, said that the imperial system was crazy and he couldn’t get used to inches.
To force Canadians to change, weather stations in Canada were forbidden from providing anything in Fahrenheit and in September 1975, weather stations reported precipitation measurements in millimetres and centimetres.
But this was just the beginning.
Next on the agenda were Canada’s roads and highways.
Across Canada, from coast-to-coast-to-coast, there are 1,042,718 kilometres of public roads.
Laid end to end, those roads would circle the Earth 255 times.
That includes 155,000 highway signs.
That is one sign every 6.7 kilometres.
And every single one of them had to be changed to show kilometres rather than miles.
Every speed sign.
Every distance sign.
That process began in 1972 when provincial governments agreed to make the change in five years. Car manufacturers began making cars with speedometers and odometers in kilometres and by Labour Day Weekend 1977, every single speed sign in the country had been changed.
Once again, Canadians were told to adapt but many were unhappy when they hit the road that September.
Critics stated that the change would lead to more traffic accidents due to confusion over speeds.
Frank Dugal, planning director of the Canadian Metric Commission said that such claims were unfounded.
Professor Alan Listiak at Queen’s University said that metric highways would make people angry quote.
“Misunderstanding will lead to more violations and more tickets. There will be a spiraling effect. Tickets are costly, both socially and economically, because they create fear in the driver and fear is not the way to run a highway system.”
Gary Pipe of Toronto was so angry he wrote a letter to the Toronto Star where he said that if he had an accident caused by another driver because of metrification he was going to send all his medical bills to the quote “metric gang in Ottawa”. He finished his letter by saying,
“Metric on the highways belongs back in Europe, where they were born with it. Let them keep it over there.”
Corporal Frank Harvey of the Ontario Provincial Police tried to keep things simple when he suggested.
“Anyone driving 60 mph in a 100 km/h zone won’t be doing anything wrong. You know, it’s really simple, although some people seem to want it to be difficult.”
But the opposition in the Western Provinces was much greater.
As someone born and raised in Alberta, I can tell you that if Ottawa wants to do something, Alberta will want to do the opposite.
And just as, Canada was switching to the metric system, it caught the eye of then US President Jimmy Carter.
His government wanted to convert and passed the Metric Conversion Act, but the change never came.
Instead, there was a massive backlash against the metric system, and by the end of the decade the conversion was abandoned.
Canada would have to go it alone, and one of the biggest fights loomed over the horizon.
When people pulled up to the pumps on a cold day in January 1979 they got major sticker shock.
Prices were listed as 20 to 25 cents per gallon, rather than 90.9 cents to $1.14 per gallon.
Every gas station in Canada had switched from gallons to litres so
that was 20 to 25 cents per litre, not gallon.
But boy were people mad.
In Windsor, Ontario on Jan. 20, 76-year-old F.M. Casgrain was asked about the change. He responded,
“Why doesn’t the rest of the world change to the imperial system instead of us changing to the metric?”
Which honestly is just hilarious. Others didn’t see the big deal Roy Piagno said,
“I just tell them to give me $10 worth of gas. And if they give it to me in litres or gallons, who cares.”
Wanting to take advantage of the anger the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada decided to make a bold move.
Thirty-seven Progressive Conservative MPs opened a Freedom to Measure gas station in Carleton Place, Ontario.
The station sold gas in both gallons and litres, which was illegal.
MP Bill Domm became the most vocal opponent of the metric change in Parliament.
He represented Peterborough, which was one of three test areas for metrification in Canada throughout the 1970s.
He said at the gas station’s opening,
“Your freedom to choose is a measure of your freedom.”
Since the station violated the metric laws by selling gas by the gallon, the Progressive Conservatives hoped that the government would order the station to be closed.
That would allow them to challenge the move in court and hopefully stop the change to a metric system.
Instead, the entire venture was met with a shrug by the Liberal government, and one year later the MPs decided not to renew their lease on the Freedom to Measure gas station.
While Bill Domm declared victory, Consumer and Corporate Affairs Minister Judy Erola stated the entire thing was a publicity stunt that was expensive and unproductive.
And it seemed that as the 1980s dawned there was nothing that could stop the metric takeover The Commission was confident that by the end of 1980, Canada would be completely metric.
But as we know… we never made it all the way.
On May 22, 1979, Joe Clark and the Progressive Conservatives won a minority government in the federal election.
The Liberals became the Official Opposition, and conversion of the metric system was paused.
In December 1979, Joe Clark’s government was defeated on a budget vote in Parliament, another election.
It had only been nine months, but Canadians once again went to the polls on Feb. 18, 1980, and elected Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals with a majority government.
Metric was back on but with renewed anger.
The conversion for grocery store weigh scales became a major issue and the deadline was pushed several times until it was firmly set for December 1983.
This involved 35,000 retail food stores in Canada making the switch.
Most were not happy about it.
Bill Willis, the owner of an IGA in Ottawa, had to pay $20,000 for scale conversions in his store.
The Canadian Federation of Retail Grocers was vehemently opposed to the conversion because it would cost them $25 million according to the Metric commission while organizations like the CFRG believed it would cost them upwards of $100 million.
Over 20,000 grocers signed petitions urging the metric changeover be halted until the United States would make a similar change.
The Toronto Sun was heavily against metric conversion, and their petition received tens of thousands of signatures.
Progressive Conservative Members of Parliament brought forward anti-metric petitions almost constantly as well.
One petition had 135,000 names on it and weighed 246 pounds…pardon me, 112 kilograms.
Neil Fraser, a tax auditor for the Department of National Revenue, was adamantly opposed to the metric conversion.
He protested it, signed petitions and refused to use metric in his job.
The government fired him.
He launched a court case against the government, but it was thrown out.
In Herbert, Saskatchewan, Jay Abell sued the Metric Commission for infringing on his legal right to have the federal government and agencies communicate with him in both official languages.
He demanded the reinstatement of the English Imperial System of Measures as an integral part of the English language.
The irony of the settlers having to shift from metric to imperial when they arrived, and their children having to shift back was not lost on anyone.
In the History of Ravenscrag, Marguerite Bidaux said,
“I remember my mother having to get accustomed to English measure, as she was used to the metric system. Today I, her daughter, am wrestling with the metric system.”
Resistance to change led to a near-tragedy on July 22, 1983, when a Boeing 767 traveling from Montreal to Edmonton had alarms blaring in the cockpit.
The plane was 12,500 metres above Manitoba.
The alarms indicated a fuel-pressure problem on the plane’s left engine.
The pilots believed a fuel pump had failed.
A few seconds later, there was a fuel pressure alarm for the right engine.
The pilots decided to divert to Winnipeg.
As they did, the left engine failed.
Seconds later, the right engine failed and the 767 lost all power.
This is so rare that the situation was never covered in training.
There wasn’t even a checklist for what to do when both engines fail and the massive 767 became e a very large glider.
As luck would have it, Capt. Robert Pearson was an experienced glider pilot.
He calculated that the aircraft was losing 1,500 metres every 19 kilometres, and he needed to land quickly.
Nearby was the former RCAF Station Gimli, a closed air force base that was converted into the Gimli Motorsports Park.
Since the 767 had no fuel, it made nearly no noise as it approached the racetrack.
People in the stands didn’t know that the plane was fast approaching.
Nor did two boys riding bicycles on an unused part of the track.
The plane was only a few hundred metres behind them and bearing down fast.
When the plane hit the track, Capt. Pearson braked it so hard that two tires blew out.
The nose wheel also collapsed and buried the front of the plane into the ground.
That was a blessing in disguise as the extra friction caused the plane to decrease speed quickly, preventing it from hitting the spectators in the stands or the boys on the bicycles on the track nearby.
The plane had glided for 17 minutes without fuel when it landed.
There were no serious injuries among the passengers, crew or people on the ground.
It was a miracle, but how did the Gimli Glider happen?
The plane’s navigational computer used kilograms in its fuel weight.
Before the plane left the airport, an incorrect conversion from volume to mass was applied, which led the pilots and ground crew to believe they had enough fuel to fly to Edmonton.
In fact, they had only 45 percent of the fuel they needed.
Soon after the disaster, Air Canada converted all its aircraft from Imperial to metric instead of maintaining a fleet that used both.
Despite the close call and the change by Air Canada
By 1984 the writing was on the wall, it seemed, metric wasn’t going to take complete hold in Canada. The Liberals had governed Canada, for the most part, since 1963.
For nearly 16 years Pierre Trudeau had been prime minister.
But after his famous walk in the snow in Ottawa on Feb. 29, 1984, he retired.
He was succeeded by John Turner, and the country headed into a federal election.
Turner, who had originally left politics almost a decade earlier, was up against the popular and charismatic Brian Mulroney.
On Sept. 4, 1984, Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives won 211 seats, a record that still stands.
The Liberals under Turner suffered a massive collapse as they lost 95 seats.
For the first time since 1958, the Progressive Conservatives had a majority government.
And that spelled the end to metrification.
Mulroney’s government relaxed restrictions on the Imperial system, if metric was also used.
What had once been required became voluntary.
Soon after, his government eliminated the Metric Commission by then 15 years had gone by and most people were used to metric for the most part.
Kids like myself had only known a world of metric, with some Imperial sprinkled in.
Government IDs still issued heights and weights in centimetres and kilograms.
Temperatures were in Celsius, and highway distances were still counted in kilometres.
And in Ontario metrification led to bagged milk
In 1967, bags of milk were introduced to Canadians by DuPont for our Centennial Year
At the time, milk primarily came in glass bottles. Some producers sold milk in cardboard or plastic jugs.
The introduction of bagged milk spread across the country as bags were easier to transport and cheaper to package.
And it turned out to be a very good move because by the 70s as other companies had to redesign all their bottles, jugs and cartons, milk bag packaging machines only needed to be resized at a very low cost.
Three-quart milk bags became four-litre milk bags without much trouble.
But with the end of metrification in 1985, milk bags started to disappear.
By the 1990s, milk bags were gone in places like Alberta.
I have early memories of milk being sold in bags in my youth in British Columbia and Alberta but now I can’t find them anywhere now.
Even though Americans like to assume all of Canada uses milk bags, they are only widely used in Eastern Canada including Ontario, and parts of Quebec and the Maritimes.
Currently, bagged milk sales in Ontario account for 80% of milk sales in Canada
The reason was that a retailer had to implement a deposit or recycling fees on milk jugs, which consumers paid at the store.
Milk bags don’t have that requirement, so retailers kept using bags and consumers kept buying them.
And although newer laws have passed in Ontario it is unlikely that the famous milk bag will ever disappear.
