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Weights and measures in Vancouver

Vancouver, and for that matter the rest of Canada, works on the Metric system. For visitors from the United States this will probably come as quite a shock because so many things are different, however visitors from Europe will be very familiar with this system, and visitors from the UK will be familiar with some aspects of it!

Although Metric is the official system used, you may still find that some measurements are referred to in Imperial. For example, the temperature is quoted in Celsius, yet generally water temperature is quoted in Fahrenheit!

The conversion chart below should help those who are not familiar with Metric to get a better idea of the system and how it works…

Metric	Imperial
1 centimetre (cm)	0.394 inches
2.54 cm	1 inch
30.48cm	1 foot
1 metre is 100cm	39.37 inches
1 kilometre is 1000m	0.621 miles
1.61km	1 mile
10,000 square metres	1 hectare
2.471 acres	1 hectare
1 acre	0.4 hectares
1 litre	0.26 US gallons
5.46 litres	1 US gallon
1 litre	0.22 UK gallons
4.55 litres	1 UK gallon
1 gram (g)	0.035 oz
28.57g	1 ounce
1 kilogram (kg) is 1000g	2.2 lb
0.454kg	1 pound

If you are driving, remember that speed limits are posted in kilometres per hour, not miles per hour. If you’re renting a car from within Canada, the speedometer will show KPH as the main numbers, but if you are bringing a car to Vancouver from the States you will need to check the smaller numbers on your speedometer.

As a quick guide, use the table below:

KPH	MPH
30	19
50	31
60	37
80	50
100	62
120	75