I know you're reading that and thinking… what? At least you probably are thinking what’s up… unless you are like me and forget to read the headlines. It’s kind of a inside joke. “Let me explain.”
We’re a country with a great interest in the weather, actually not just a great interest, but almost a obsession. If you have spent any time near the West Coast, [I’m Canadian eh… so this means the Canadian west coast] you would certainly understand our relationships with umbrellas, and gum boots. Necessary, and not evil if you lived there. In fact there were approximately 10 calendar days a year that you could safely leave the house without your umbrella. I think they were called summer. That’s when we all complained about the heat. I can’t tell you off of the top of my head the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit… but I find both of them hard to spell. When I am reading a blog post and a Canadian tells me that it’s –20 it makes perfect sense to me. But when a American bloggers says it’s –20 I’m confused. Exactly how cold is that? Growing up we were the generation that spanned the great divide. In elementary school, learning to measure everything in cups, and inches. Pounds, feet, inches, miles, Fahrenheit. Someone had the less then bright idea to change it all up to metric… Centimeters, Celsius, meters and grams. I’m sure that they meant well. Now that was fine, I suppose, but much of the country didn’t embrace the move to metric, instead they adopted a wait and see approach, some merely moved to measure in the old movement.
Imagine your Mom sent you to the store to pick up a pound of sausages. But because you were more interested in the notes that Jimmy Houseman was passing you in school that day, than listening to what your teacher had to say… you missed the lecture on converting to metric. So you returned home with a kilogram of sausages, about two point two instead of one. That’s a whole lot of sausages. The Americans were quite happy to keep on keeping on, and obviously smarter about it if you ask me. And they didn’t need to figure out the optimum new Celsius temperature for outdoor swimming pools in the summer. If you grew up on the West Coast… you would be saying something like, people can swim outdoors? Would that be during the 10 days of summer? And did they need to take a umbrella? When someone says it’s –30 in the US, for us in Canada, that means pretty darned cold. As in freeze your toes off if you were silly enough to go outside without shoes on. And I still have no idea how cold it would be there. That’s why I so appreciate Far Side of Fifty’s blog posts, she converts for me, most likely because she doesn’t a kilo of sausages but only a pound. 62 Fahrenheit might mean slightly warm/coldish to you if you are a American… but to me it means the temperature that my husband thinks the house should be in winter, while I think 20 C is perfect… neither of us can agree. So Zero below frozen came around when I started to complain onto deaf ears… [I really think that they were frozen and not about to thaw] about the temperature in our house. I would mutter as I turned up the heat ever so slightly, about it being Zero below frozen here, and he would exclaim how warm it was and turn it down.
Life in Celsius, and Fahrenheit… Things to take away from reading this post. Canada is a land of igloos, and ice, and has only 10 days of summer. No one swims outside without a umbrella. Jimmy Houseman passed notes to Jane in Elementary school, and that’s why she can’t spell Fahrenheit now. A Kilogram of sausages is a lot of sausages, they took a week to eat them all up. Jen’s house is much colder then she thinks it should be… should she buy one umbrella or two. There will be a quiz after reading this post, and it will be in metric. Good Luck!
Contains: 100% Canadian Content All images and text are original to Jane Vandervoort If you enjoyed this post please make my Mom’s day by clicking on the buttons below to share this post. Then she can brag to all the Ladies in her building about how famous her daughter is… LOL. You realize the famous part is a joke right? We of course know better… but I do appreciate you sharing anyways.