Cubits and kilos in Canada

Canada can sometimes feel like a country caught between three others.

Not quite French, not quite British, but yet still not American, Canadian society is an amalgamation of a cultural and political tug of war that started back in the seventeenth century and continues through to today.

The first colonists were French; of course, being French, they weren’t here for the land or to escape to a better life. No, they came for fashion. Beaver pelts, in particular. Fur trappers came by the hundreds to make their fortunes from the beaver-rich land around Hudson Bay.

English settlers soon followed, as did a century or so of England and France bickering over whose country it was first (with both of them quietly ignoring the native inhabitants over in the corner).

This was not uncommon between England and France.

Finally, a dust-up named “The Seven Years War” broke out in Europe between Britain and France, and when Britain emerged victorious, they won Canada.

England, in a rare show of not being complete imperialists, decided to let the French settlers keep their language, their customs, and even their church. This was a fairly generous deal considering it was the Roman Catholic Church, and England had a history of not really liking Catholics terribly much.

The descendants of that French colony became the province of Quebec. Their local version of French (Québécois) is the main language spoken there, their streets have charming names like “Rue Saint Antoine”, and every so often, Quebec decides that it’s more French than English, and tries to split away from Canada and form its own separate nation – an idea that France doesn’t wholly object to, and which has been the source of some rather strained Franco-English relations over the years*.

However, for all that Quebec looks towards France, the rest of the nation faces England.

Canada is still a Commonwealth Realm; they recognise Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state, they have a royal mint, and they get together every four years with other Commonwealth countries for their own private Olympics, to which the US and China aren’t invited.

And yet, for all that Canada is a British commonwealth, south of them lies the cultural behemoth that is the United States.

American brands and stores are common here, Canada is on the same international dialing code and mains voltage as the US, and the US and Canada are the only two countries to add sales tax at the point of purchase rather than just including it in the displayed price, like decent nations.

And so we have Canada. A blend of three different, often warring cultures coming together to create a unique mix of language and customs.

Canadian English is closer to American English than British, but Canadians have the politeness and reserve of their British counterparts. Here, they will eat a baguette, but drink american drip coffee with it. Their currency has quarters, but with the Queen’s picture on it.

And then there’s their system of weights and measurements.

Nothing better sums up Canada’s mixed cultural heritage than their somewhat bedraggled adoption of  the metric system.

Before this system was developed in the late seventeen hundreds, measuring things could be a fairly hit n’ miss process.

The first measurements were done using what was most readily available: body parts. A cubit was the length from your elbow to the tip of your finger, a span was from the tip of your outstretched thumb to your little finger, and a digit was the length of, well, a digit**.

The Romans inherited the foot from the Egyptians, which they then divided into twelve unciae or inches, and multiplied by two thousand to create the mille passus, or “thousand paces” – our current mile.

This was a simple, portable measuring system, which worked perfectly well if only one person ever needed to do the measuring. Unfortunately, it started to break down as soon as two people of different heights got involved, and so, around the tenth century, people started trying to standardise things.

Of course, by “people”, I mean “Kings”.

Edward the II standardised the ulna, which contained three feet, with each of those feet containing twelve inches. An inch was defined as three grains of barley end to end. Five and a half ulna made a perch, and forty perches long and four perches across gave you an acre.

So far, so good – as long as you were English.

If, however, you were German, you might use the Wegstunde, the distance you could travel in an hour, or the Klafter, which was equivalent to anything between 1.76 and three metres depending on where you were, or the Zoll, which was somewhere between 1/10th and 1/12th of a Fuss.

The Russians had their то́чка, the Finnish their linja, the Portuguese their Palmo de craveira, and the Polish their Wiorst. There was the Flemish Ell, the English Ell, and the French Ell, all of which were different from each other. There was a measurement based on how far you could hear your neighbour call, and even the hobbit, which was equal to four pecks or two and a half bushels.

Things were confusing, to say the least.

Then, one day, around 1795, the French put down their croissants, and came up with the metre: one ten millionth part of a quadrant of the earth’s circumference. This was then divided into tenths and multiplied by tens to create the decimal system of measurements we now know as the metric system.

England had been dead keen on the idea of a standardised decimal system of weights – right up until the time the French revolutionaries rolled it out. After that, they stopped returning their calls.

During Napoleon’s time, he introduced the metric system throughout his empire. Not all countries adopted it immediately, but the seeds were sown, and throughout the next sixty years, most of Europe moved to using the new system.

Except England.

Not too keen on all things Napoleon, they introduced their own standardised system of measurement in 1826, the Imperial System, with all the ounces, feet and pints you could shake a stick at.

In a way, it made sense – after all this was a country where there were twelve pennies in a shilling, two shillings in a florin, two shillings and six pennies in a half-crown, and twenty shillings in a pound. Of course there were 5fl ounces in a gill, and 20fl ounces in a pint. Why wouldn’t there be?

Fortunately, some hundred and forty years later in 1965, England let bygones be bygones, and introduced the metric system, allowing all of her commonwealth countries to follow suit. This meant I was lucky enough to grow up in a country where I never had to care how many yards are in a pint.

This left the US – the staunchly anti-imperial country – as the only industrialised nation to still use the Imperial System. Obviously.

Except, well… Canada. Sort of.

Canada, being a British commonwealth, had used the Imperial System until the seventies, when it was due to switch over with the rest of us. But, while Quebec leapt at the chance to become even Frencher, the rest of the country gave the metric system a more lukewarm welcome.

With their neighbours across the border remaining stubbornly on the Imperial System, the English Canadians were not convinced about switching over. Finally, after several decades of dragging their heels, they decided that the most logical, and least confusing way forward would be to use both the Imperial and the Metric system.

Obviously.

So in Canada, it will be -2° C out, and they’ll cook pizza at 435° F. They’ll drive 50kph, and have two feet of snow fall on the mountains. They scuba dive in 7mm thick wetsuits, and wear 20lbs of weight. It’s illegal here to sell milk in imperial units, so they sell .94l of milk, which is the equivalent of 2 pints.

It can be quite confusing to a new arrival,

But, in the Canadian manner of things, it makes perfect sense.

Sort of.

*When French President Charles de Gaulle visited Quebec in 1967, he sparked an international incident by shouting “Vive le Québec libre!” (“Long live free Quebec!”) the slogan frequently used by the separatist movement. The British were not amused, and Mssr de Gaulle left Canada somewhat hurriedly the next day.

**The next time you try to buy furniture using this method only to get something that doesn’t quite fit, remember this: Egyptians used this to build the pyramids.