Being a Dominion of the British Empire, Canada took to using the Imperial measurement system.
This is what I grew up with, feet, inches, pounds, miles per hour, gallons (which are slightly different than the US Gal ) and etc.
In my everyday woodworking pursuits, I used strictly inches and foot. It use a base 12 system;
12 inches in a foot. This make it easy to express ratio or fractions such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and etc.
I like this fraction system because it help me visualized better object size and relation, both in my head and by looking at it. But it is deemed archaic and somewhat convoluted to the uninitiated.
Enter the Metric system, base 10, makes everything divisible or multiplied by 10 easy to switch unit of measurements. Simple and clean isn't it?
And being used more and more around the world, it make sense to standardized. There are all kinds of horror stories in the engineering world where small errors of conversion between both measurements systems from each side of the pond caused all kinds of Oups!!
Rockets blew up at launch, space craft missed their trajectory by... a lot, planes ran out of fuel.
Here in Canada, we have been standardizing to the Metric system kicking and screaming since the 70s.
Between political and public resistances, this is where we are today, after almost 50 years of metrification.
My kids generation, born in the seventies, grew up learning Metric, not the Imperial system.
It created some confusion when I was working with the kids in the shop. They could not understand my inches and me their centimeters. I long solved that problem by making sure to remove any measuring devices that had metric on it. It's 6 and three little bars Dad :-)
Today I drive in Km per hour, pay my gas about Cdn $1.00 a litter, read my temperature in Celcius but adjust my thermostats in Fahrenheit. My weight and height are in feet and pounds, kitchen is still staunchly Imperial also. We set the stove temperature in Fahrenheit , use measurements like quart, cup, spoon etc.
And in woodworking? NO metric please, NO way. QEII was my Commander In Chief for over 37 years, I am a staunch Imperialist's when it comes to measurements. Long live my foot :-)
If you look at Canadian woodworking magazines, you will find often, oh surprise, feet and inches versus metric.
So after almost 50 years later, we Canadian are still slowly being dragged to the dark side of Metric, kicking and screaming. You will have to wait for the passing of my generations before making more headways I'm afraid :-)
Bob, putting his "foot" down on this Metric non sense :-)