Environment Canada’s use of Celsius turns 50 years old in 2025.
It was the catalyst of a lengthy national metric conversion that abruptly ended a decade after it began.
A bone-chilling April Fools’ Day in 1975 marked the first time Canadians used Celsius to measure weather temperature.
Having grown up in Canada, I always thought the mishmash of metric and imperial was a mess…now I live in the UK and they have an even stupider mishmash. Like wtf is stone, and why tf is it only used to measure a person’s weight?
We buy in metric and measure in imperial. 1 kg of flour please, then I go home and measure it in cups and tablespoons.
For cooking, etc we should have names for 5, 10, and 25 ML, 125mL etc. Worst thing they did was try to say is that 250mL is a cup, when it is actually a great way to screw up a recipe. Fortunately Alexa does my conversions for me while my hands are wet or occupied.
But either way, I still need to know Imperial so that I can talk to Americans. Some folks seem to think being clueless about metric is some badge of honour.
I dated an American chick when I was in my 20s, she was working towards a master’s in medical science (research shit, I can’t remember exactly what) and if it didn’t apply specifically to what she was studying she couldn’t do metric. Like one day, mid August, height of a heatwave, I was bitching about the heat, it was something like mid 40°s outside, but we were doing lead abatement so we were in hazmat suits with every seam taped up and inside a containment. So we’re on the phone and I say I’m glad I finally got to go into the lunch area as it was only 36°. She was super confused: But that’s fucking freezing!