Fifty years ago, Canada adopted degrees Celsius to measure temperature, beginning a transition to the metric system. However, despite the decades, the country remains divided, oscillating between imperial and metric units in daily life.
It was the 1is April 1975 that Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) paved the way for this transition by measuring temperature in degrees Celsius instead of degrees Fahrenheit. It was the first of the efforts to promote understanding and acceptance of the metric system.
« I remember that first leaflet that said: it’s not an April Fool’s joke »recalls David Phillips, who joined ECCC seven years before this transition.
This change, however, was not a smooth one as many Canadians were resistant to this change at the time.
« To hell with weather maps and Celsius numbers. »wrote an elderly person in a letter to the English daily London Free Press.
Others had charged that the adoption of Celsius had caused Mother Nature to go wild at a time when the Maritimes were experiencing a violent storm.
« Since these experts replaced the old Fahrenheit thermometers, the weather has been terrible »told an angry reader at the Bridgewater Bulletin newspaper in Nova Scotia.
However, it only took a month to notice a drop in negative comments, declared the head of the Canadian Metric System Commission, Stevenson Gossage.
For a while, most Canadian media outlets used both systems. Two years after adoption, all weather reports in the country used metric measurements.
The transition is still incomplete 50 years later. Canadians continue to measure the temperature of their oven or swimming pool in degrees Fahrenheit, for example.
A transition that is not unanimous in Parliament
It was the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau that formed the Canadian Metric System Commission in 1971 due to industry pressure for the country to abandon the imperial system.
In addition to degrees Celsius, the Commission required road signs to be in kilometers from 1977 and petrol pumps to be in liters from 1979.
These changes were resisted by the political class. About forty Conservative MPs championed petitions that garnered thousands of signatures and opened a free-to-measure gas station that sold fuel by the gallon or liter.
Bill Domm, one of the conservatives who defended this petition, mentioned that people were ready to go to prison over this issue.
A complication will tarnish the transition. In 1983, an Air Canada plane had to make an emergency landing at a Manitoba aerodrome after running out of fuel. A faulty metric system conversion had been cited as a factor.
South of the border, United States President Gerald Ford also signed similar legislation into law. However, the conversion was voluntary.
The imperial system, « and brake » au commerce international
The head of the Canadian Metric System Commission died in 2001. His son, Jonathan Gossage, said his father felt the transition was important for the country given that the imperial system was a drag on international trade.
He points out that the transition was easier for those who were good at mental arithmetic and that young people were able to grow up with this new unit of measurement.
However, the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, like the United States, will slow down this transition to save money. Canada thus dissolved the Canadian Metric System Commission, leaving the country halfway to a metric system, but still anchored in the imperial system.
