FAMOUS CANADIANS:
BILL DOMM
• William Henry Domm, better known as Bill, was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1930. He was the son of a minister for the United Church of Canada. Educated at the Ryerson Institute of Technology, he later became a radio broadcaster in Peterborough. In 1979 he became a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Canadian House of Commons, representing Peterborough. He served as an MP until his defeat in the 1993 election. • Bill Domm took strong stands on several issues, most notably gun control, abortion, capital punishment, and the metric system. Bill Domm was against the metric system. More specifically, he was against the mandatory adoption of the metric system. • The liberal federal government of Pierre Trudeau first began implementing the switch to the metric system in Canada in 1970. The Metric Commission was established in 1971 to help facilitate the nationwide change. By the mid-1970s, metric product labelling was introduced. In 1972, the provinces agreed to make all road signs metric by 1977. Not everything went smoothly, however. • Bill Domm's hometown of Peterborough was one of the government's three test centers for the switch to the metric system. And, led by Bill Domm, Peterborough subsequently became a hotbed of opposition to the switch. The backlash was epic. Public outrage was palpable. There was civil disobedience— carpet sellers defiantly selling product by the yard rather than the meter. There were protests. Citizen indignation filled radio call-in shows and letters-to-the-editor pages.
• Bill joined forces with 37 other Progressive Conservative Members of Parliament to press the issue. By 1981, gasoline and diesel fuels were required to be dispensed in liters rather than gallons.
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• In 1983, the 37 Conservatives all contributed funds in order to operate a gas station which dispensed gasoline not only in the required liters but also in the outlawed gallons. Located in Carleton Place, Ontario, it was dubbed the "Freedom to Measure" gas station. Customers were offered the option of purchasing their gas using whatever measuring system they preferred: one pump dispensed in liters and the other in gallons. • The purpose of the gas station wasn't to make money selling gas; it was to provoke the government to arrest them for using non-metric methods of dispensing gas so a legal challenge could be brought against the mandatory use of metric. Bill Domm vociferously dared the government to arrest the operators and was frankly disappointed when they did not. He claimed that 79 percent of the gas was dispensed in gallons rather than liters. The government steadfastly ignored the station and it closed after a year. • By 1984 when the Metric Commission was disbanded, rules on enforcing metrics were loosened, making it voluntary, and offering businesses the option of selling their goods using either system, or both. However, the "metrification" of the country was not reversed. By the time Bill Domm died in 2000, Canadians were using a mix of metric and Imperial measurements. Since 1976 the law requires that prepacked food products declare their volume in metric units, though Canadian Imperial units are still legally permitted. Milk has been metric since 1980. In 1975 Fahrenheit temperatures were replaced by Celsius. • The use of the metric and Imperial systems varies according to generation. The older generation mostly uses the imperial system, while the younger generation uses the metric system more frequently.
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