Forty years ago, Celsius came to Canada. Its reception? Brrrrrrrrr
On April 1, 1975, Canada’s weather system went metric — cold turkey — with the introduction of Celsius. Some never recovered.
April 1, 1975, was unseasonably cool, with 100 per cent chance of complaints owing to the rare gust of bureaucratic change.
On his 6 p.m. broadcast the day Fahrenheit died, CBC weatherman Bill Lawrence informed a somewhat confused and cantankerous public that it was 1 degree Celsius. Then someone threw a pie in his face.
“My spirit was behind the arm of him that threw it,” wrote Toronto Star television and radio critic Dennis Braithwaite. “I invite that hero and all others who cherish freedom to join me in the civilly disobedient act of ignoring the CBC’s (decree) and sticking to Fahrenheit.”
By 1975, Canada was in the earliest stages of its long and not very successful break-up with imperial measurement. Canada’s favourite national talking point — the weather — was the first major measure to “go metric” on April 1, swapping Fahrenheit for Celsius.
Both temperature scales were created in the 18th century. Physicist Daniel Fahrenheit was making and selling mercury thermometers in Amsterdam by 1717, with 32 fixed as the freezing point of water, and 96 as the body temperature. (Later, he decided on water’s boiling point of 212 as the fixed point, writes Ulrich Grigull in the paper Fahrenheit a Pioneer of Exact Thermometry.)
His thermometers were “considerably superior” to his competitors, “thereby achieving a wide circulation and acceptance of his scale,” Grigull writes. Fahrenheit was a fellow of the Royal Society, which gave him a boost in England, and later in North America and the British empire, where Fahrenheit was linked with use of the imperial system — serving “mankind faithfully for more than two centuries,” as Braithwaite eulogized in the Star.
The frustration that many Canadians felt on April 1, 1975, can be traced to 1742, when astronomer Anders Celsius decided that the more logical way to measure the weather was to divide the temperature into 100 units between the freezing and boiling point of water. He fixed 0 as the boiling point of water and 100 as its freezing point. His centigrade scale was reversed after he died in 1744, and later became known as the Celsius scale, a metric measure.
By the mid-1970s, metric outliers included the United States, Liberia, Brunei, Yemen, Burma and Canada. The Americans had given the metric system the brush-off from the beginning. The French, hoping to secure some global uniformity, sent a copy of the kilogram and a “copper meter” to the U.S. in 1795. They were never used, and the U.S. was not invited to the talks that formalized the metric system a few years later in Paris, according to a 1971 U.S. study that looked at the history of the controversy and examined the pros and cons of going metric: “With all nations becoming increasingly interdependent … it behooves us to stop obstructing the completion of this desirable reform,” and yet, “Compulsion is repugnant to American ideals.”
In Canada, the plan was to go “cold turkey” with Celsius, unlike the U.K., where a gradual conversion using both measures began in 1962. “They’re still doing it, and nobody has learned anything,” said the director of Canada’s Metric Commission in 1975. The commission, established in 1971, tried to sell the conversion as a “fun thing” and a “good conversation piece.” The “weather goes metric” brochure from Canada’s Atmospheric Environment Service tried to keep the mood light: A smiley face wearing a party hat skates in -10 C, bundles up in -40 C, and smokes a pipe, indoors, in a comfortable temperature of 20 C.
“It is interesting to note that on the Celsius scale, the yearly temperature range in Canada is generally symmetrical, with only rare or record temperatures falling outside the 40 C to minus 40 C bracket,” the pamphlet offers.
The symmetry failed to soothe Braithwaite, who was described in his 1988 obituary as a “grand curmudgeon of Canadian journalism.” He saw metrication as a betrayal, calling Celsius the “Judas goat” that would lead Canada into the “darkening morass of the metric system.” Others dismissed Celsius as claustrophobic, negative, and damaging to tourism.
But no one was enraged enough to throw a pie at an innocent messenger. That turned out to be an April Fool’s Day trick.
“I can’t give you the story where it was a disgruntled Fahrenheit person,” Lawrence says with a laugh. But with the number of citizens who believed Fahrenheit was good enough for their grandfathers, and therefore, good enough for them, Braithwaite can be forgiven for his assumption.
“I took a lot of very angry and sometimes very nasty phone calls because people were really upset,” says Nancy Cutler, the atmospheric environment service’s metric conversion co-ordinator, from her home in Richmond Hill. “Canadians value their weather information, and when you start tampering with it, you’re tampering with something very close to their hearts, and they let me know.”
In 1974, Cutler, then a junior meteorologist, applied for the unique job and had nine months to prepare the department and public for the change. Some people supported metric because “it made sense,” but many resented it, including bureaucrats.
“It was kind of, ‘This is what we all grew up with, what are you doing changing it?’”
As the Star reported on the rush for Celsius thermometers, the country’s addiction to Fahrenheit lingered. Media gave dual units for a while — and people talked about what the “real temperature” was. It was only in 1993 that the Star stopped giving Fahrenheit in its weather reports.
“Initially, some readers groused. Now, most seem to have accepted the change; all agree the weather is no better than before,” Don Sellar wrote in an editorial that year.
Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips, is always delighted when he meets someone who doesn’t understand Fahrenheit. (Typically, anyone under the age of 45 would have grown up with metric measures at school.)
When it comes to talking about the weather, it’s handy to understand both. Fahrenheit can embellish the “so hot you can fry an egg” heat in the summer, Celsius better underscores frigid winter suffering. A frequent speaker on all matters meteorological, Phillips used to carry conversion charts to help the audience. Now he only dabbles in the old ways when necessary — “to get a gee wow whiz out of somebody.”
After the Celsius switch, rain and snow accumulations went metric later in 1975. Schools began to teach metric exclusively that September. Cars and road signs made the change in 1977. Gasoline was sold by the litre in 1979.
In 1985, the Mulroney government relaxed certain regulations requiring metric-only measurement. The Metric Commission was disbanded, and Canada was left with a measurement mish-mash.
It didn’t help that the U.S. never made the switch. Werner Antweiler, a business professor at the University of British Columbia, notes that imperial measurements are more common in the construction industry, partly because of American dominance of manufacturing supplies. Height is still a matter of feet and inches, although Ontario driving licences use centimetres. Celsius has had staying power, but thermostats and ovens still use Fahrenheit.
“Fahrenheit gives you a little bit more sensitivity to the numbers, so if you’ve got the heat at 71 well you can move it to 72 as opposed with Celsius, where there is almost a rounding off,” says Phillips, confessing that his thermostat is set to Fahrenheit. “I never want people to see that when they come into our place.”
source: Forty years ago, Celsius came to Canada. Its reception? Brrrrrrrrr | Toronto Star
........................................
In my personal opinion, biggest mistake Canada ever made, voting for Pierre Trudeau, and 2nd biggest going metric.
On April 1, 1975, Canada’s weather system went metric — cold turkey — with the introduction of Celsius. Some never recovered.
April 1, 1975, was unseasonably cool, with 100 per cent chance of complaints owing to the rare gust of bureaucratic change.
On his 6 p.m. broadcast the day Fahrenheit died, CBC weatherman Bill Lawrence informed a somewhat confused and cantankerous public that it was 1 degree Celsius. Then someone threw a pie in his face.
“My spirit was behind the arm of him that threw it,” wrote Toronto Star television and radio critic Dennis Braithwaite. “I invite that hero and all others who cherish freedom to join me in the civilly disobedient act of ignoring the CBC’s (decree) and sticking to Fahrenheit.”
By 1975, Canada was in the earliest stages of its long and not very successful break-up with imperial measurement. Canada’s favourite national talking point — the weather — was the first major measure to “go metric” on April 1, swapping Fahrenheit for Celsius.
Both temperature scales were created in the 18th century. Physicist Daniel Fahrenheit was making and selling mercury thermometers in Amsterdam by 1717, with 32 fixed as the freezing point of water, and 96 as the body temperature. (Later, he decided on water’s boiling point of 212 as the fixed point, writes Ulrich Grigull in the paper Fahrenheit a Pioneer of Exact Thermometry.)
His thermometers were “considerably superior” to his competitors, “thereby achieving a wide circulation and acceptance of his scale,” Grigull writes. Fahrenheit was a fellow of the Royal Society, which gave him a boost in England, and later in North America and the British empire, where Fahrenheit was linked with use of the imperial system — serving “mankind faithfully for more than two centuries,” as Braithwaite eulogized in the Star.
The frustration that many Canadians felt on April 1, 1975, can be traced to 1742, when astronomer Anders Celsius decided that the more logical way to measure the weather was to divide the temperature into 100 units between the freezing and boiling point of water. He fixed 0 as the boiling point of water and 100 as its freezing point. His centigrade scale was reversed after he died in 1744, and later became known as the Celsius scale, a metric measure.
By the mid-1970s, metric outliers included the United States, Liberia, Brunei, Yemen, Burma and Canada. The Americans had given the metric system the brush-off from the beginning. The French, hoping to secure some global uniformity, sent a copy of the kilogram and a “copper meter” to the U.S. in 1795. They were never used, and the U.S. was not invited to the talks that formalized the metric system a few years later in Paris, according to a 1971 U.S. study that looked at the history of the controversy and examined the pros and cons of going metric: “With all nations becoming increasingly interdependent … it behooves us to stop obstructing the completion of this desirable reform,” and yet, “Compulsion is repugnant to American ideals.”
In Canada, the plan was to go “cold turkey” with Celsius, unlike the U.K., where a gradual conversion using both measures began in 1962. “They’re still doing it, and nobody has learned anything,” said the director of Canada’s Metric Commission in 1975. The commission, established in 1971, tried to sell the conversion as a “fun thing” and a “good conversation piece.” The “weather goes metric” brochure from Canada’s Atmospheric Environment Service tried to keep the mood light: A smiley face wearing a party hat skates in -10 C, bundles up in -40 C, and smokes a pipe, indoors, in a comfortable temperature of 20 C.
“It is interesting to note that on the Celsius scale, the yearly temperature range in Canada is generally symmetrical, with only rare or record temperatures falling outside the 40 C to minus 40 C bracket,” the pamphlet offers.
The symmetry failed to soothe Braithwaite, who was described in his 1988 obituary as a “grand curmudgeon of Canadian journalism.” He saw metrication as a betrayal, calling Celsius the “Judas goat” that would lead Canada into the “darkening morass of the metric system.” Others dismissed Celsius as claustrophobic, negative, and damaging to tourism.
But no one was enraged enough to throw a pie at an innocent messenger. That turned out to be an April Fool’s Day trick.
“I can’t give you the story where it was a disgruntled Fahrenheit person,” Lawrence says with a laugh. But with the number of citizens who believed Fahrenheit was good enough for their grandfathers, and therefore, good enough for them, Braithwaite can be forgiven for his assumption.
“I took a lot of very angry and sometimes very nasty phone calls because people were really upset,” says Nancy Cutler, the atmospheric environment service’s metric conversion co-ordinator, from her home in Richmond Hill. “Canadians value their weather information, and when you start tampering with it, you’re tampering with something very close to their hearts, and they let me know.”
In 1974, Cutler, then a junior meteorologist, applied for the unique job and had nine months to prepare the department and public for the change. Some people supported metric because “it made sense,” but many resented it, including bureaucrats.
“It was kind of, ‘This is what we all grew up with, what are you doing changing it?’”
As the Star reported on the rush for Celsius thermometers, the country’s addiction to Fahrenheit lingered. Media gave dual units for a while — and people talked about what the “real temperature” was. It was only in 1993 that the Star stopped giving Fahrenheit in its weather reports.
“Initially, some readers groused. Now, most seem to have accepted the change; all agree the weather is no better than before,” Don Sellar wrote in an editorial that year.
Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips, is always delighted when he meets someone who doesn’t understand Fahrenheit. (Typically, anyone under the age of 45 would have grown up with metric measures at school.)
When it comes to talking about the weather, it’s handy to understand both. Fahrenheit can embellish the “so hot you can fry an egg” heat in the summer, Celsius better underscores frigid winter suffering. A frequent speaker on all matters meteorological, Phillips used to carry conversion charts to help the audience. Now he only dabbles in the old ways when necessary — “to get a gee wow whiz out of somebody.”
After the Celsius switch, rain and snow accumulations went metric later in 1975. Schools began to teach metric exclusively that September. Cars and road signs made the change in 1977. Gasoline was sold by the litre in 1979.
In 1985, the Mulroney government relaxed certain regulations requiring metric-only measurement. The Metric Commission was disbanded, and Canada was left with a measurement mish-mash.
It didn’t help that the U.S. never made the switch. Werner Antweiler, a business professor at the University of British Columbia, notes that imperial measurements are more common in the construction industry, partly because of American dominance of manufacturing supplies. Height is still a matter of feet and inches, although Ontario driving licences use centimetres. Celsius has had staying power, but thermostats and ovens still use Fahrenheit.
“Fahrenheit gives you a little bit more sensitivity to the numbers, so if you’ve got the heat at 71 well you can move it to 72 as opposed with Celsius, where there is almost a rounding off,” says Phillips, confessing that his thermostat is set to Fahrenheit. “I never want people to see that when they come into our place.”
source: Forty years ago, Celsius came to Canada. Its reception? Brrrrrrrrr | Toronto Star
........................................
In my personal opinion, biggest mistake Canada ever made, voting for Pierre Trudeau, and 2nd biggest going metric.
