Conversion of weighing scales in retail food stores created political controversies. Cut-off dates were established for different areas, extending up to December After that, store-weighed food items could be priced and advertised only by kilogram or gram quantities and sold only in metric units.
Conversion involved some 35, retail food stores across Canada. Metric units steadily became normal for most products and services. However, certain areas of business did hold out against conversion, such as real estate. Metric conversion proceeded voluntarily in many sectors, but federal and provincial legislative action was required in some. Regulations on the use of metric units for weights and measures in retail trade were established and enforced by the government for the protection of consumers and retailers against unfair practices and confusion in comparing products.
The government did not escape criticism for imposing mandatory use of metric units to the exclusion of old units. Opponents of metric conversion pointed to the costs at a time of inflation and economic weakness, the danger of being out of step with the United States and the invasion of a foreign language of measurements upon a Canadian heritage bound to imperial measurements.
Some challenged metrication through the courts. Included among the voices of resistance was an editorial in the Toronto Sun opposing metrication. The newspaper also organized a petition with the names of tens of thousands of Canadians opposed to converting to metric. Much of the debate was partisan, with the Liberal government supporting mandatory conversion and many Conservative MPs opposing it. In , Neil Fraser, a tax auditor in the Department of National Revenue, was fired from the Liberal administration for publicly opposing metric conversion.
The shortage was caused by a miscalculation of the metric amount of fuel needed for the flight, giving the plane only half the fuel it needed. Brian Mulroney 's Conservative government reaffirmed the commitment to metric but revoked the required use of metric alone in some cases, including gasoline, diesel fuels and home furnishings.
In , some small businesses were exempted from the requirement to install metric scales. Forty years ago, Celsius came to Canada Toronto Star looks back at the history of metrication in Canada. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. Remember me. I forgot my password. Why sign up? Create Account. To this end, they introduced, among other things, the Republican Calendar in , which consisted of hour days, with minutes per hour and seconds per minute.
But while decimal time did not stick, the new decimal system of measurement, which is the basis of the metre and the kilogram, remains with us today. Prior to the French Revolution, at least , different units of measurement were used throughout France Credit: Madhvi Ramani.
These scientists were keen to create a new, uniform set based on reason rather than local authorities and traditions. Therefore, it was determined that the metre was to be based purely on nature. It was to be one millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. The line of longitude running from the pole to the equator that would be used to determine the length of the new standard was the Paris meridian.
This line bisects the centre of the Paris Observatory building in the 14th arrondissement, and is marked by a brass strip laid into the white marble floor of its high-ceilinged Meridian Room, or Cassini Room. This is the line that two astronomers set out from Paris to measure in Using the latest equipment and the mathematical process of triangulation to measure the meridian arc between these two sea-level locations, and then extrapolating the distance between the North Pole and the equator by extending the arc to an ellipse, the two astronomers aimed to meet back in Paris to come up with the new, universal standard of measurement within one year.
It ended up taking seven. The line of longitude used to determine the length of the metre runs through the centre of the Paris Observatory Credit: Madhvi Ramani.
As Dr Alder details in his book, measuring this meridian arc during a time of great political and social upheaval proved to be an epic undertaking. The two astronomers were frequently met with suspicion and animosity; they fell in and out of favour with the state; and were even injured on the job, which involved climbing to high points such as the tops of churches.
The Pantheon, which was originally commissioned by Louis XV to be a church, became the central geodetic station in Paris from whose dome Delambre triangulated all the points around the city.
But despite all the technical mastery and labour that had gone into defining the new measurement, nobody wanted to use it. It was in that the use of metric weights and measures became legal though not standard in the U.
Many industries and sciences used the metric system, and, like Chafee does today, men of the turn of the century—like Elihu Root, Thomas Edison and John Pershing—argued that switching would save the U. In , the first Pan-American Standardization Conference was held in Peru, and future president Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, voiced his support for the idea. The idea was to keep the American standard names for units of measure but adjust their amounts to equal their closest metric counterparts.
But the Britten Bill was not without opponents. In March of , when the bill came up for debate, the House confronted what such a switch would actually entail. Treat, the bill died in the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures; though advocates tried to find other ways to move the issue forward, no progress was made. The next time the metric system made headlines was in the s—and by that time, the tide seemed to have turned, as TIME reported in June of It may be years before Texans ask for liter hats, or a Miss America measures , or a new Hank Aaron hits a towering meter home run.
Inevitably and irreversibly, however, the metric system is coming to the U. Though lawmakers have waffled for decades over proposals to switch to the world standard of weights and measures, chances of passing the so-called U.
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