I remember the night of Jan 4, 1994, at the Valhalla Hotel in Kitchner, -25 F, wind howling like a bashee, sitting in the dining room nursing a pasta primavera and a Molson’s. It gets cold in the great white north. Friggin’ cold.
AFA driving, I think it is worse on the Prairies. Usually, a cold snap, lower than -10F, only lasts a day or two in ON, then it warms up to where salt and calcium on the roads melt the ice and snow.
Not the same on the Prairies, where the cold can last a week or longer, cold enough that calcium does not work. Several days after a snowstorm, with all the traffic on main arteries, the snow becomes ice and is polished by all the tires braking, making intersections very difficult and icy. A man was killed on Deerfoot Trail (major expressway in Calgary) yesterday, when he had an accident, got out of his vehicle to inspect the damage and was killed when another vehicle hit the two disabled vehicles, which ran him over.