How many feet in a litre?
It鈥檚 an old joke, and one with a back story that had the potential to make it even less funny than it already is (assuming one has the bad taste to joke about a plane crash).
The tongue-in-cheek query refers to the Gimli Glider 鈥� an Air Canada flight that, in July 1983, was forced to make an emergency landing with no engines in Gimli, Man. after its fuel tanks ran dry 41,000 feet (12,500 metres) above northern Ontario.
The cause of the near tragedy 鈥� confusion over fuel load calculations during the nation鈥檚 switch from Imperial measurement to the metric system.
As a result, the Montreal-to-Edmonton flight took off with less than half the fuel it needed to complete its journey.
We can joke about it now because it ended as that most iconic of non-news stories, 鈥淧lane lands safely.鈥�
Everybody was fine and, after what we can only assume was several minutes of abject terror, were left with a great story to tell at cocktail parties 鈥� probably over white Russians and tequila sunrises.
It鈥檚 been more than 40 years since the switch-over began, and most of us still employ a mix of metric and Imperial to get through our day.
In fact, Canadians toggle back and forth between the two systems in pretty predictable ways, according to a conducted earlier this spring by the Angus Reid Institute.
When it comes to height and weight, I鈥檓 old school 鈥� it鈥檚 pounds, feet and inches for me 鈥� but with distance, I鈥檓 metric all the way. Increments of 10 make infinitely more sense than having to memorize each unit of measurement as a separate entity.
Speeds? Same.
Though I occasionally still hear the old jingle in my head 鈥� 鈥�30 gives you 50; 50 gives you 80; 60 gives you 100鈥� 鈥� that was aired to train drivers to start thinking in km/h instead of mph.
This reminds me of an American on his way to Alaska, who stopped at the tourist information centre in Dawson Creek, where I spent a summer working in 1986.
He commented on how great it was that we had 90-mph speed limits in B.C. He鈥檇 been making great time, until we explained the situation to him and suggested he might want to cap it at or near 55.
True story.
I can toggle between cups, teaspoons, tablespoons and millilitres without a second thought. But don鈥檛 ask me what an ounce (dry or fluid) looks like.
Outdoor temperatures make sense to me in degrees Celsius, but room and cooking temperatures register best in Fahrenheit.
All of this makes me perfectly average, apparently.
According to the survey, most Canadians (67 per cent) say they are fine with the mix. But, as we learned from recently released census data, most Canadians are old.
I was in elementary and junior high school as many of the changes were being implemented. What we learned in class was mixed with what was practised at home, creating a generation of Imperial-metric mutts.
Today鈥檚 youth are somewhat more submersed in metric and future generations will no doubt make the switch completely.
In 2017, only Myanmar, Liberia and the USA continue to cling tenaciously to the Imperial system.
If it were down to a pair of small nations in Asia and Africa, it wouldn鈥檛 be an issue, but with our large and influential neighbour among the holdouts, we are often forced to straddle the line between the old and the new 鈥� mixing our gallons and grams, our tons and newtons.
That said, we are still miles 鈥� or, rather, kilometres 鈥� ahead of our American cousins, who think telling drivers their exit is coming up in a 1/4 mile is preferable to breaking it down in hundreds of metres.
These are the selfsame hundred-metre units, mind you, that their athletes train to run, walk, cycle, swim and row, so that they can compete with the rest of the planet.
That鈥檚 just one example of why it makes perfect sense for them to abandon their feet and follow in our footsteps.
Yet, they won鈥檛 give an inch.
Of course, when they are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the new world 鈥� as they inevitably one day will be 鈥� we鈥檒l watch and smile knowingly as they muddle through their own decades of metric mutt-hood.
