My coldest winter moment was in Fort McMurray, Alberta. I was snowblowing at minus 60! It’s memorable because holy was it ever cold and you couldn’t stay outside for more than 30 minutes before having to go back inside and warm up.

My coldest was December of 1983.

I was driving a Honda Accord from Victoria to Montreal as a way to make my way home from the west after a summer of working on the CN railway gangs while in University.

I left Victoria on a sunny day around the 2nd week of December, maybe 15 C.

That night I stayed in Vancouver, still warm, little wet. As I travelled East the temperature fell, at Rogers Pass the snow! Well, calling it a blizzard would be understating the situation. Following dim, glowing tail lights through a snowball might be closer…
Upon arriving in Calgary the weather had cleared, but well below zero. The following miring was truly beautiful, striking out on a sunny winters day, the prairies were glistening. By nightfall though the car’s heater was running full bore, as I arrived in Regina the road side temperature signs read -45F.

The next morning the Honda was not pleased, after a couple of waaan, waaan said the engine finally sputtered reluctantly to life to slowly warm up. Temp reading -50F.

Passing through Winnipeg, temp reading -50 I decided to pus on towards Thunderbay and beyond…

At longlac, at 2:30am on a brilliant, moonless, crystal clear night I slowed for a wrecker stopped in the middle of the two lane highway, suddenly the oil light flashed brilliantly. After pulling the car as close to the snowbank I investigated the engine compartment to find oil everywhere, except in the engine as evidenced by the dry dipstick.

The wrecker approached, frozen transport truck in tow, and slowed to ask whether there was a problem. After describing the situation he told me to climb in, “it’s -65 out here, if I leave you here you’ll be dead by morning”.

The following day the car was towed to the garage and after taking 4 hours to thaw, the problem wasn’t found but the temp had warmed to -50 so I departed.

The car was finally delivered to the recipient in Montreal 4 days later as scheduled.

My coldest moment ever was in 2009… we were visiting family in Ottawa for Christmas. We have lived in Australia too long to remember how freaking freezing it gets! Our family thought it would be special to go and cut our Christmas tree down…
So, we went out on a day when the sun appeared to be shining and it seemed it would be mild… NOT!
After 20 mins in the below 15 degrees weather I started to hyper ventilate and the pain in my hands became unbearable! I begged to go back to the shack where I passed out and still to this day have wonky thumb nails from getting mild frostbite!
The tree was brilliant and the Christmas special…. my husband, who cleaned the wind screen in his board shorts can’t wait to do it all again….

I remember one morning in Groundbirch, BC during the winter of ’94 when we had been in a cold snap of -40s for over a week and I was considering taking the kids to the community store, so I was trying to read the thermometer that was fastened to the outside of kitchen window. Now this was an old house with single-paned windows so it was pretty commonplace to have to scrape the frost off the window to read that thermometer, so I scraped the frost off to read if it was above -40 C but no cigar. Colder.
I kept scraping the frost off and still no mercury was visible as -45 C, -50 C and then -55 C appeared. In disbelief, I scraped the frost down to the final increment of -60 C on that thermometer to come to the sad sight of the mercury balled up at the base.
What the actual temperature was that day will be a mystery as it was colder than that thermometer could indicate!
Needless to say, the kids and I stayed home that day.

Driving up to Slave Lake in a blizzard from Edmonton in 1983 with my roommate to surprise our boyfriends in -50. We got to Slave Lake and went into a coffeeshop for a quick cup of coffee. Went back out to the car and it was dead! Ha! The surprise was on us……lol

Pretty much all of every January in Winnipeg. (Rinse. Repeat.)

My Dad & I decided to go “winter camping”. Went out to Kananaskis, set up the tent and start a fire. Got the stove out and made some pasta with Tomato sauce. It’s getting colder and dark, like 6 pm. Can’t sit anywhere, snows too deep (we had dig out the fire-pit) Dad says, hey, let’s head over to the William Watson Lodge, they have an interpretative talk. Off we go and have a listen, warm up…Nice Park lady doing the talk so I saunter up to ask a question. OK, so all warm and time to go to the warm washroom in the lodge before heading back to the tent. I look in the mirror, I have a huge stream of red tomato sauce from my lip down my chin.
Back to the tent, it’s about -15 now, for some reason I change the sleeping pad, it’s not so good turns out, my body heat melts the snow and moisture creeps in and about 2 am, my bags wet. Every time I move around, the frost on the roof of the tent falls down around us like snow. First light, -18 we get up, start the car, drive home. Never been winter camping since.

New years eve 1973 in Winnipeg it was -48 degrees. We were all jammed in our car trying to keep warm from body heat. The tires felt like they were square ..like frozen Fred Flintstone tires lol.

It was the first night of a 5 day calculated drive from Whitehorse to Vancouver at the end of November 2014. My co- driver and I stopped for the night at Liard Hotsprings lodge. I think it was minus 30 and I was not leaving the area without a dip in the springs. The walk there was painfully cold and taking off layers of clothing was even more painful however the waters were soothing and kept us warm. The moon was the only illumination that night and the steam rising provided an eerie backdrop. After about 2 hours , putting back our clothes was even trickier trying to control your body from trembling due to the sudden drop of temperature as we got out of the water. There were 2 seasoned truckers there as well who invited us to warm up in their heated cab after what seemed to be a longer hike back. A shot or two of alcohol never tasted soo good.

I was walking home across a lake in New Brunswick with the family golden retriever during an ice pellet storm, when we broke through the ice not far from shore. The water was cold, but not as cold the rest of the walk home with my snow suit freezing solid and wind driving bits of ice in my face.

We are fortunate to have a 1/4 section of forested land in the foothills. We love to camp there year-round (at least I do; my wife is not quite as enthused about camping in the white stuff). I believe it was 5 years ago a group of us spent a very cold New Year’s Eve sitting outside by a crackling fire with a temperature of -24 C!! We made it to midnight (some stayed up later yet!), and lived to tell the tale!

I was born in the Yukon, mostly raised on Calgary, always been a winter girl! I must say tho! Having to de-ice the locks on the car can be a real bummer at -30!!!

Have to quote Elsa here: The cold never really bothered me anyway! Let it go 😛

My memory is from April 2014. In Eastern Canada we had a terrible blizzard and over 48 hours of freezing rain. Although the temperatures warmed up, the house was at 12C because of the prolonged outtage. We were all frozen and hungry so I put on my husbands survival suit and boiled hotwater for tea for everyone (neighbours too), and made pasta on the BBQ. It made us all laugh and forget how cold we were. Still today the trees behind the house have large branches broken that haven’t fallen.

Winter of 1981-82 Faro Yukon Territory -67 from Oct until March
No wind too cold

As a child I happily endured three winters in Yellowknife.
Little heat … -30° was common, and less sunshine, but it was generally pleasant, once the feeling had returned to my fingers and toes.
The coldest I have ever felt, by far though, was February in Vancouver, BC
A windy -4° and sleet pounding me sideways.
after 2 hours in a warm bath my bones still felt the chill.

Last February I was volunteering at the Yukon Quest checkpoint at Braeburn Lodge. The Quest is a 1,000-mile dogsled race between Whitehorse, Yukon and Fairbanks, Alaska — and does it ever freeze.

On this particular night, the mercury dropped to a hair above minus 50 celsius, which is enough to make you stuff your electronics in the bib of your snowpants as your breath freezes into icicles on the outside of the scarf you’ve wrapped across your face and you shuffle around in front of the ten-foot-tall bonfire that’s warming up volunteers and the Quest’s caravan of media beside the checkpoint.

I was signing mushers in and inspecting sleds for mandatory equipment like a hatchet, sleeping bag and snowshoes. And that meant spending a lot of time outside. Waiting. Craning necks down the trail in search of the glimmer of a headlamp or the beads of a dog team’s eyes.

Suddenly, the sky flickers and then lights up in a sea of dancing green waves as a geomagnetic storm turns the Northern Lights on in full force. Everything stops as the aurora dominates the site. The media turn their cameras on the show and take photos that will get thousands of impressions online the next day. And for a moment, even though it’s fifty below, nobody feels very cold.