The Measure of a Country

So how does Canada measure up?

On our way to Syracuse we passed through Ontario, Canada, the part at the north shore of Lake Erie. After dropping Syarra off at Syracuse, we then headed back into Ontario, but a different part. We are in Kingston, Ontario, at the point where Lake Ontario drains into the St. Lawrence River. This region is the 1000 Islands region and I will have more to say about that soon. But I have several blog posts in my head and they will come as they come.

Today, I want to talk about Canada, and some of the differences and similarities for Americans traveling there. There are a lot more similarities than differences, so, while it is a foreign country to Americans, it won’t feel all that foreign.

Driving is much the same. Canada has big controlled access highways that are practically the same as our interstates. Just like in our highways, most drivers treat the speed limit as though it were a suggestion (one that is cute, but hardly relevant) rather than a true limit. Of course the big difference is that these speed limits are measured in kilometers per hour. Now I am going to approach a tangent (not quite a limit.)

When we lived in Reno, we had two cars. My car was named Ozark. Going into a tangent within a tangent! The reason my car was named Ozark was because of its first big trip. We had just returned to the United States. We were with my parents in Boynton Beach, Florida. That is where we bought the car. That car went on an immediate road trip. First it went from Boynton Beach to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so we could see friends from the city we left when we started our international travels. From there the car took us to West Des Moines, Iowa, where we visited some of my family. Then we drove southwest to Harper, Texas, where Alrica’s parents live. Finally, the car took the long journey to Reno, Nevada.

We found the longitude and latitude of each of the cities on that first trip and took the average (the arithmetic mean for you mathematically minded people) of each. We then used the mean longitude and mean latitude to find a point on the map. That point was in the Ozark National Forest. Thus, the name of the car.

You may be curious what the name of the second car was (or is, since it is the car we still have.) Answer: It doesn’t have a name. Now you may be curious why doesn’t the second car have a name. I know this is going to sound a bit out there, but my wife does not believe you can just name a car. This isn’t to say that no car can have a name. But she feels a car must earn its name. Though the process for doing so is a bit opaque to me. I mean, if our car won the Indianapolis 500, would that be enough? (Heck, if it even competed in the Indianapolis 500, that would be quite a feat. Especially as it isn’t an Indy Car. I guess Nascar racing is more realistic.) What, short of some epic racing, jumping over a river, or being thematically related to a superhero makes a car worthy of having a name? Thus far, I don’t know. And that’s why I call our current vehicle The Car Which Shall Not be Named. (And no, that is not a name, it is just what I call it. Don’t argue with me, you’ll get me in trouble with Alrica!)

Back to only one level of tangency (though I am super tempted to consider, geometrically, what the tangent to a tangent would be, but I will save that for my imagination). We took a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia while we lived in Reno. And we took Ozark on that trip. Alrica was driving when we crossed the border. At the first speed limit sign we came to, she noted that it was in kph (kilometers per hour) and the car’s speedometer was in mph (miles per hour). The speedometer was digital only, Bemoaning that she would need to do conversions, I pointed out that there was no such need. One lovely thing about Ozark was that, on the dashboard, there was a button which would convert your speedometer from miles per hour to kilometers per hour. (Luckily, that same button would also convert back if you pressed it again, or the car would have been very frustrating for the rest of our days in America after that trip to BC.) One button convenience.

Now, we are using The Car Which Shall Not be Named. It has no such convenient button. But it does have an analog speedometer, where the needle moves along a circular arc with speeds on it. The outer edge of the arc has the numbers in miles per hour. But there is an inner arc with smaller numbers (here by smaller I mean in a smaller font size, because the numbers are actually greater numbers) which lists kilometers per hour. Zero button convenience. The Car Which Shall Not Be Named also has a digital speedometer. Thus far, I can’t figure out how to make that change units.

Incidentally, this difference in units applies to all the distances too. If a sign reads Toronto 240, you are not 240 miles away. You are about 150 miles away, because you are 240 kilometers away. And on that note, unlike in America where there is a mile marker every mile, in Canada there do not seem to be regular kilometer markers on the edge of the road.

The place where the change of units is most confusing is when you want to buy gasoline. In America we state our prices in US dollars per gallon. But in Canada they state their price in Canadian cents per liter. How can you know how much you are paying? Math to the rescue!

First, I convert from Canadian cents to Canadian dollars. This is just like it would be in America, you divide by 100, or you move the decimal point two places to the left. Then you multiply the price by 3.79. Why? There are 3.79 liters in one gallon, so to buy a gallon of gasoline, you have to buy 3.79 liters of gasoline. Finally, you multiply by the exchange rate, how much US money is one Canadian dollar? Right at the moment, that is about 74 cents or 0.74 dollars.

I could write fractions to explain it using dimensional analysis. Would anyone be excited about that? I mean, other than me? Anyway, effectively if you turn the price into Canadian dollars and multiply by 2.8 then you have approximately the price in US dollars per gallon. (If the exchange rate changes, that number would change too.)

For example, right now in Kingston, you see gasoline for 164.9 meaning 164.9 Canadian cents per liter. (Note: Canadians would correct me and say it is 164.9 Canadian cents per litre. I acknowledge that it was the Americans who changed the spelling of words and the Canadians are keeping it pure. But both my second grade teacher, Ms. Pelz, and my spell checker would be disappointed if I were to go around writing litre. You can’t probably see it in the blog post, but as I am writing this, there is a wiggly red line under litre.) So I would say 164.9 cents is 1.649 Canadian dollars per litre. And then multiplying by 2.8 says I am paying about 4.62 US dollars per gallon.

If you are feeling hot under the collar after that entire excursion into mathematics but you still want to travel abroad, no fears. There are apps that will convert your gasoline (or really petrol) prices from local currency per liter into dollars per gallon. So you can cool down now. And you would do so in Celsius.

Yes, that is the other everyday unit of importance. (It’s not the only other one, but it is one that comes up pretty often.) But think of it this way: 20 degrees - shorts, 10 degrees - pants, and somewhere in the middle, you decide when to change.

The grocery store is very familiar. I mean, I don’t know which aisle holds anything unless it happens to be common enough to be on the big signs. But that’s true anytime I go to a new grocery store. They have similar products, they have store brands, they have shopping carts and check out clerks and self-check out lanes. But I have noted a few differences.

The butcher area has a Halal section. I think this is very cool. We saw that a lot in Muslim majority countries when we traveled. It is nice to see such helpful service in a country that has many Muslims, but which are certainly a minority.

Weights are in grams, so if you want to compare meat prices to those at home, remember 454 grams is a pound. (You can approximate with 450 grams.) I was surprised by how many packages of ground meat are 450 grams or even 454 grams. This is probably a remnant from the days when Canada still used the Imperial system. Not saying the meat is that old, just the size of the containers.

The grocery store doesn’t give you any bags at all. At least not in Ontario. You can buy reusable bags, but you really need to remember to bring your own. They don’t have paper and they don’t have plastic.

I guess it is a question of flexibility. If you are going to travel internationally, there are so many cultural differences you have to appreciate. Honestly, the units of measure aren’t that big a deal. There are plenty of conversion apps and after a while, you get a sense of how much you are spending relative to the prices you are used to.

The other possibility would be for the United States to switch to the metric system, making all of us get used to it, and then foreign travel would have one of the obstacles taken out of the way. But that doesn’t seem likely. While I wouldn’t say we are diametrically opposed to such a move, we are certainly metrically opposed.