The Canadian metric system

Canada began a gradual conversion from Imperial measurement to metric in 1970. The conversion was so gradual that it ran out of momentum and ground to a halt in 1984. Since then it has never been revived.

So gas is sold in litres and temperature is measured in Celsius, but real estate and clothes are sold in Imperial measures. People usually state their height in feet and inches, even if their passports and other official identification give it in centimetres (not metres and centimetres as elsewhere). Many goods (beer, for example) are sold in packages or containers that are sized in Imperial or US measures but are labelled with the equivalent metric size.

Then there are the boxes, seen here, used by Howard Greenhouses of Simcoe, Ontario for its produce. Their size of 1 1/9 bushels has no exact equivalent in metric measurement, no matter whether Imperial or US bushels are intended.

So we are generally considered a metric country, but we’re not. We have three systems of measurement – metric, Imperial, and US – and we manage. The Canadian way, really. We don’t like consistency.