Even those civil service despots in brussels would have a hard job to metricate Alberta.
Virtually the whole of the province is measured out in parcels of land called 'Sections'(square miles). People generally buy land in quarter sections. The last 90 feet of each quarter section in a north-south and an east-west direction have to be made available for the province to build a road should they wish.
Thus a grid of 90 foot wide roads punctuated by junctions at integers of miles (or half miles) has crafted the province into a truly imperial geography.
The only complication is that every 26 miles you travel along a north south road, the road follows a dog leg along a so-called 'correction line'. This is in order to account of the curvature of the earth. A patchwork of perfect squares simply can't be pasted onto a sphere! |