The Metric System (Sort Of)
Canada was declared a metric nation in 1971, and after 2.8 decades, it's safe to say that we're as metric as we're going to get. At first the two systems, metric and imperial, battled it out-the metricists seized the road signs and thermostats, while the stubborn imperialists refused to buy anything that wasn't measured out according to some body part. You may recall extremists in Ottawa driving all the way to Carleton Place, a distance of sixty-three kilometres, to fill up at a service station that still sold gasoline in gallons. But that's allover now. Resistance and insistence proved equally futile.
Purists on both sides have lamented the resulting mish-mash, failing to see that what we have now is a system that's uniquely Canadian. By combining the more sensible features of the metric system, or SI (for Systeme international d'unites), with some long-cherished aspects of the imperial system, we've come up with a seamless hybrid that makes perfect sense to us all. Let's call it simperial. Like franglais and "Progressive Conservative," simperial is the ideal Canadian compromise.
For example, the other day I asked directions to an auction sale: "Drive ten kilometres down this road," I was told, "and you'll see a barn about two hundred feet in from the highway." That's simperial. Only in Canada can a river be half a mile wide and thirty metres deep. At building supply yards, You can buy 100 square metres of shingles and a box of three-quarter-inch roofing nails to hold them down. When I ask my daughter, who is fourteen and has been raised metric, how tall she is, she says "Five four." What's the temperature outside? "Plus three." Simperial.
In our quiet, peacekeeping way, we took the best features from each extreme and consigned the rest to oblivion. Simperial simply makes more sense than either of its two feeder systems. Nobody's feet should be size forty-two anything. But at the same time, zero degrees, not thirty-two, is obviously the temperature at which water should freeze; if anyone knows that, it's us.
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2003, old post ID:16524
I'm coming to live with you, monsieur. 
