Canada 150 A local retrospective - Roads go metric during a very wet 1977

This week in 1977, roads went metric. The speed limit signs across the province made the switch from miles per hour to kilometers per hour. 

This was part of the gradual replacement of imperial measurement with metric across Canada, which began in 1970. In Yorkton, that meant the replacement of 750 signs on the 1,900 miles of roads in the district according to the September 7, 1977 edition of Yorkton This Week. Note that they  still chose to report the amount of road in the district in miles.

The push towards metrication began in 1970 with a white paper on the benefits of the project, arguing that metric would be vital for international trade. In the pages of Yorkton This Week, reaction within the pages was relatively muted, but there was some resistance – when temperatures changed from Fahrenheit to Celsius in April of 1975, it was noted that while the change was official no local stores stocked Celsius thermometers, mostly because nobody wanted them and store owners thought it would be ‘confusing.’

A more pressing concern was what would happen with schools in Yorkton. Two schools, St. Mary’s and Angus Spice, were facing decreased enrolment, and questions were being raised about whether or not the schools would close. St. Mary’s had its enrolment drop to 118 students, and Angus Spice was down to 104, down from 300 students when the school 

Angus Spice eventually did close, and the building is now used for the offices of SIGN. St. Mary’s, however, saw its fortunes change, and it continues as the community school in the Christ the Teacher Catholic School Division. 

The reversal of fortunes at St. Mary’s lead to a major renovation project in 1988, which added a chapel and a gymnasium, as well as the addition of portable classrooms in order to deal with increased enrolment.

The other big issue in the city was rain, September began with enough rain to start to affect harvest, with many farmers planning to break out the grain dryers in order to deal with the wet crop. 

The rain brought harvest to a standstill, and worries about frost were a big concern for the crop still on the field. There was some hope, however, as farmers expected higher than average yields if they could actually get in the fields in the first place.

In retail, Shopper’s Drug Mart was advertising some extra special savings, and that included a carton of cigarettes for $6.59 as one of the headline specials.