There are some joys to being Canadian. One of which is scaring our American neighbours with some of our spellings, of things like neighbour, colour, honour and cheque, where we use the British spelling. Or, the pronunciation of ‘Schedule’ rather than ‘Sked-yule’, which means, by pronunciation, I woke up this morning and had a schit and a pisch before I made the coffee.
The BigFun-YankeeFrightener is the weather. I just eyeballed the weather for the next five days for Ottawa. Daily high temps start at -11C and drop to -19C by Wednesday. Those are the high temperatures, not the lows and don’t take into account wind chill. In Ottawa, we call it Winterlude Weather, as it always seems to land during the winter carnival called Winterlude and naturally American tourists think that we have this all year-round.
Please be assured, dear American friends, this is the two or three weeks a year in Ottawa that Mother Nature just up and tries to kill you. The other 49 or so weeks are Temperate, Too Damn Hot, Not Bad, Wet or Construction and Road Work.
There are other colder national capitals in the world. Ulan Bator in Mongolia is it compared to Ottawa. Even Helsinki and Reykjavik are warmer, but we like it here most weeks, except the next one or two or three.
RoadDave 
Of course nature is trying to kill you. You Canadians are WAY too smart, kind, educated, and civilised (yes, with an S!) to be tolerable. So don’t worry. It’s no dishonour (yes, with a U!) to be Canadian, just not recommendable in Darwinian terms. Now excuse me, I must go put some PETROL into my Cavalier ZED-24! :p
(Yes, I am Chicago born-and-bred. When you’ve heard Chicago-ese, it raises an irrational desire to embrace English as the English themselves speak. If my father says he’s going to warsh the car one more time, I’m gonna need somewhere to hide from the law!)