Weights and measures

Sounds like Canada is in a similar situation to the UK then. Not sure about the British pound (weight as opposed to Pounds Sterling currency), but the British Gallon is also different (smaller) than the US one. I suspect it's because the British and Canadian one are the same.

Britain is basically in a half-way state at the moment as well. For scientific purposes, we all use metric. Weather reports on the TV are all in degrees C (though in the summer, if it's hot, the reporter will mention what that is in farenheight). Food is all packaged as metric (but also with an imperial smallprint section).
Yet... we still use feet and inches when talking to each other about our heights, stone and pounds for peoples weights, our road signs are all in miles.

As you say, its a damn mess.

The situation here in Japan is better for general everyday life. Everything in metric after it was adopted in the 1890's (approx). The only guys who hold out a bit are the traditional carpenters who use a system based on a measurement called the 'shaku'. A shaku is about the same length as an inch in old imperial terms (which is 2.54 cm). BUT, it's broken down (or scaled up) using base 10 (rather than stupid base 12 with inches to feet). So, you can do sensible things like 10.2 shaku (or 10 shaku and 2 bu if I remember the Japanese correctly).