Many foreigners are baffled by Canada's quasi-metric system. I went to a doctor from Europe who was doing his residency here and he said he was adjusting to it because he didn't understand U.S. measurements.

The only reason Canada isn't completely metric is because we all visit and buy products from the United States, and they are not metric and damn you if you try to convert them. I have had to learn imperial because I work for a U.S. company and need to speak the language.

Canadians are half and half. Consider:

• Almost exclusively we use Celsius for air temperature - many Canadians don't know Fahrenheit. But we use Fahrenheit for water temperatures, particularly with pools.
• We speak in imperial units when it comes to height, but with distance between cities it's in kilometers. We use inches and feet for small distances but meters for larger distances.
• Weight is almost exclusively pounds. It's rare someone in Canada talks in kilograms.
• We use teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, ounces (all imperial) for cooking because our recipes are all from the United States. If you want to use metric you have to convert to grams or ml.

So I would agree most Canadian kids are exposed to a degree. But in flying, the height is given in feet (meters are most appropriate) and for distance kilometers is certainly appropriate. I do find AC gives temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit (Celsius first) most of the time.

So, in a way, we could say to travelling Americans, "well foreigners, that's your problem you don't understand metric." But instead we want their money so we oblige