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Perma Press

In the 70s--need I say more--Prime Minister PET (Pierre Elliott Trudeau) did a number of things to cajole and harangue Canadians.  There were wage and price controls, there was Fuddle Duddle, there was the Fuddle Buck, that wasn't worth a buck (there being 25 per cent discount, more or less, against the American dollar--in the long history stretchy dollar, 15 cents either way makes no difference).
Protesting the weak Canadian dollar; a group of businessmen gave away bumper stickers and wore Tru-dough fuddle buck T-shirts outside the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday. [Incomplete]
The Fuddle Buck was, however, worth 100 cents True Dough, and it certainly stretched better than fabulous Fortrel, or any of a number of 70s miracle fibers and fabrics.
How could you forget the Dacron bathroom ensemble, to match your famous four appliance colours: avocado green, burnt almond, coppertone brown, and poppy red.
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Washer/dryer, fridge, stove--missing anything?  Oh, yes, the dish squasher!
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And, in the small appliance category, the bun warmer, the crock pot, and the electric knife.
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Then he brought in the metric system, which made "A quarter" (of a pound) of bologne in grams a morning plenary at the annual meat slicers' convention in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
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It also made Trudeau wrenches very unpopular to weekend mechanics, in their aquamarine corrugated fiberglass enclosed carports
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who have never given up their imperial torque wrenches even to this very day.
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Torque is as torque does, surely.

And what were Canadians to make of the meter stick, which was a paint store premium?
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It was as awkward and inexplicable as a slide rule,
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and as mechanically challenging as an architect's scale.
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What's more, the meter stick made a perfect blind man's cane, when paired up with a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer's in Mr Christensen's Henry Wise Wood physics class.
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A slap of the meter stick on the shins was definitely harder than a swat of a yardstick on the socks!

If nothing else, PET left us with Perma Press.Image result for perma press 1970s
Image result for perma press 1970s

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