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Metric system: Metre mistake?
Depending on your perspective, it was either a sensible scientific shift, an annoying unnecessary change or a sinister communist plot. Canada's decision to go metric in 1970 definitely sparked some passionate debates. It even drove some Canadians to civil disobedience. CBC Archives explores the history of Canada's gradual and sometimes shaky transition to the metric system — a transition that, to this day, has yet to be fully completed.
Program: As It Happens
Broadcast Date: Nov. 12, 2002
Guest(s): Ken Alder
Host: Barbara Budd, Mary Lou Finlay
Duration: 12:10
Last updated: March 19, 2012
Page consulted on November 28, 2012
All Clips from this Topic
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In 1963, a Toronto engineering professor says Canada should go metric.
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Canada has just announced its official plans for going metric, and CBC...
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While Canada has already begun metrication, the U.S. is dragging its h...
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An American metric critic is waging a war against metric on political ...
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90 Minutes Live features a light-hearted discussion on the pros and co...
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Front Page Challenge talks to a former civil servant who lost his job ...
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A store owner in Calgary is charged for selling carpets by the yard.
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Jack Halpert, gas station owner and "metric rebel," talks to CBC's Bar...
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A Toronto butcher goes to court to fight for ounces and pounds.
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Three different journalists from across the country talk about metric ...
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To protest mandatory metric, 37 Conservative MPs have opened up a gas ...
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Trudeau gets all fired up during a metric discussion in Parliament.
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When it comes to metric, school children are better educated than thei...
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Nova Scotia's premier speaks out against the metric system.
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The National gives an update on the metric transition at the end of 19...
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With the government's new 1985 metrication policy, metric remains mand...
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Canada is measuring in two systems these days, and it's getting confus...
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Thanks to the French Revolution, a new measurement system was born.
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When 18th-century surveyors scientifically determined what the length ...
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Many Canadians are angry about mandatory metric, and say they aren't g...