Pencils, eh
A virtual museum of the golden age of the Canadian pencil industry.
The story of metrication in Canada is rife with drama and intrigue... a grand vision with mixed results. The Metric Commission was established in Canada in 1971 to support Canada's conversion to the metric system of measurement. To help Canadian's make the shift, they produced lots of pamphlets, pencils and rulers which were given away. Pencils with metric measurements were given out in the 1970s with reminders of the new system of measurement. Like pencils produced for the census, they ended up in many household drawers and can still sometimes be found. Rulers were also produced. Since these were not consumable as pencils were, they are less rare. I see them occasionally in thrift shops and online marketplaces. The metric system was never fully adopted in Canada and while temperature is measured in Celcius and speed in kilometers per hour, other measures are still stuck in the old imperial system. The Metric Commission was disbanded in 1985 but these artifacts are a reminder of a time when the conversion was fiercely debated in homes and politics.
2 Comments
Robin Roger
4/21/2024 09:10:21 am
Metric measurement was launched the year I graduated from high school. I still have to go through a conscious conversion process to gauge the volume, speed, weight or size of anything described in metric terms. I don't know my height or weight in metric. This is partly because I never had to use the system in school and partly because one of the most common fiels of measurement, cooking, often involves recipes from non-metric publications, such as U.S. cookbooks or web sites.
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jen
4/22/2024 10:57:47 am
My grampa resisted the metric system till the day he died. "He'd say It's about five miles or eight of those little things", or "they say it'll be 20 degrees today or 70 in real measurement.". I don't adopt new things imposed on us quickly either, I guess I learned it from him! He'd probably be offended to know I wrote about him on the blasted internet.
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