Imperial and Metric Measurement Systems in Canada

                                                                             (draft 1st)

I would tell one confusing story which happened to me recently.

One day my husband and I were going to the nearest town for groceries while our neighbour was sending us a message and asked to buy for him “two quarts of half@ half creamo”.  As my husband and I came to Canada from Europe, where we both used metric measurement system (he is from Germany and I am from Ukraine), so we decided that one quart is 250ml which means ¼ litre. So we bought two packs by 237ml of half@half creamo. But how much we all were surprised when we came back home and our neighbour came to pick up his good. According to the imperial measurement system one quart is 0.9463 litres which is more than ¼ (one quarter) litre in the metric system. It is not hard to guess that our calculations were wrong and instead of two quarts we bought two quarter.

After this strange situation I asked me self why it happened, why there was misunderstanding? So I went to my “best friend”, internet, and found the answer to my questions. According to my search, only three countries in the world such as USA, Liberia, and Burma still use officially the archaic Imperial system of weights and measures. But what about Canada? Canada adopted and officially uses the metric system since 1970s, but imperial measurements are often used as well. The use of metric or imperial measurement varies by age and region. Older Canadians are sometimes more familiar with the imperial measurements, whereas younger Canadians are more familiar with metric. And it seems many provinces and territories in Canada include the imperial system of measurement as a part of their school education.

 I am sure, many immigrants have often had similar confusing situations which I had: in grocery stores, hardware stores, clothing shops, medical clinics, and etc. In my opinion the better way to avoid the similar situations with this not official double measuring system is: the government should make strict decision which one of the measurement systems in Canada people have to use. Why we should make our life more difficult if we can make our life easier!