Saw this recently on a WAN Show (19:12). How true is this? It sounds wild.

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13 points

Because there are still huge numbers of people alive today that grew up and went to school before Canada officially switched to metric. Don’t forget that we’re trapped by the Americans. Where I live I can literally see the individual buildings in the city across the river which is upstate New York. There are several radio stations along the border that do their weather reports in both °C and °F. Personally… I’m 6ft tall, 235Lbs, every liquid is in litres and temperatures are in Celsius. My oven has both F and C. Driving in Canada is usually measured in time when speaking to people. I know that Toronto is about 4hrs away on a good day and it can be 7hrs on a bad day in the winter. Don’t get me started on accidents or construction. I have no idea how far it is in KM. I’m guessing maybe 400km since the speed limit is 100kph and it takes 4hrs to get there.

FWIW, I’m 45yrs old. So I’m really trapped in between the two systems. I prefer metric but my parents and many coworkers were born and raised pre-metrification.

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5 points

> FWIW, I’m 45yrs old.

Metric or imperial?

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2 points

45 metric years. I was born in QC and started out the right way. Never even heard of imperial till my family moved to ON. I’m also fluent in 24hr timekeeping, none of that AM/PM bullshit for me.

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2 points

Thanks for taking your time go give me that detailed answer. Really appreciate it. Don’t even know what to say know XD

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4 points
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I forgot to mention another thing about our timeline. “Metrication” in Canada only started officially at the government level in 1970. The scientific community used it long before that but definitely not the average citizen and not the government. It will take several generations to finally get rid of it here, if ever. Cuz ‘Murica next door.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada

If you really want to hear something sad… we buy butter in bricks of 453g which are actually just 1lb bricks that were relabeled. Same goes for jugs of certain liquids. There’s no such thing as a 4L jug of milk or juice or even motor oil. We have 1gal jugs that are labeled and contain 3.79L of product.

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1 point

It’s interesting to see that Australia and New Zealand did just fine with metrification around the same time. Yet somehow, the UK and US absolutely bungled it and Canada has had to wait for generational change.

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