WARMER THAN WINNIPEG: NORTH POLE, PARTS OF MARS

A GUIDE TO HOW DAMNED COLD IT IS

Canada is really cold right now. It’s so cold that statues of John A. Macdonald are taking themselves down. It’s so cold that Pamela Anderson is wearing sealskin. It’s so cold that people are warming themselves around Andrew Scheer’s personality.

But don’t take our word for it. Below, a series of shocking statistics to bolster your indignance that somebody thought it was a good idea to put a country here.

IT’S COLDER IN WINNIPEG THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN IN SCOTLAND (EVER)

Scotland is famous for its harsh conditions. How else to explain a culture built around fried food and wool? Regardless, the coldest ever temperature recorded in Scotland is only -27.2 degrees Celsius — and even then it was a rare occurrence that occurred on the country’s northernmost tip. In Winnipeg on Boxing Day, meanwhile, it approached -30. This is food for thought when considering the shock of Scottish immigrants who came to settle the prairies. Even a hearty family from the Scottish highlands would have only managed to prop up a rudimentary cabin before they were being hammered by temperatures unknown to their entire family tree.

IN EDMONTON, IF YOUR CAR WON’T START, IT WILL TAKE 16 HOURS FOR A TOW TRUCK TO ARRIVE

Despite snow being the default road condition in Alberta, the province’s urbanites never quite seem to grasp the rigours of winter driving. This is best exemplified by the current Canadian Automobile Association wait times for roadside assistance. On Wednesday afternoon, there was a 17-hour wait for a full tow, a 16-hour wait for a battery boost and a four-hour wait for those who might have locked their keys in the car with the engine running.

APPROXIMATELY 0.00003 PER CENT OF CANADA ISN’T FREEZING

Canada has more land than almost anyone on earth: 10 million square kilometres of it. Right now, all of that land is frozen save for a few small patches of southwestern B.C. The coastal parts of Vancouver Island experienced a brief thaw on Wednesday, as did parts of Vancouver — but that’s about it.

A SWATH OF CANADA THE SIZE OF EUROPE UNDER AN EXTREME COLD WARNING

On Boxing Day, extreme cold warnings were issued for a section of Canada stretching from the Alberta/ B.C. border all the way to the St. Lawrence River. That’s a swath of Canada roughly 3,500 km wide. For context, the distance between New York and Mexico City is only 3,400 kilometres. This means that if an exasperated Winnipegger got into their car and tried to drive to a part of Canada that wasn’t under an extreme cold warning, it would take them a minimum of 10 hours.

CANADA’S WARMEST CITY STILL COLDER THAN THE RECORD LOWS OF MORE THAN 30 COUNTRIES

Those smug, pension-collecting Victorians, as usual, have the distinction of living in the warmest urban centre in all of Canada. But even the Garden City had a white Christmas, and its relatively mild winter would still be considered devastating by much of the world. As of press time, Victoria’s balmy three degrees was colder than the historical record low of more than 30 countries, including Taiwan, Indonesia, Cuba, the Philippines, Jamaica and Singapore.

SASKATOON IS COLDER THAN BOTH NORTH, SOUTH POLES

Since the North Pole is in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, it’s a little tricky to get an accurate temperature reading. But the Norwegian Meteorological Institute tries their best, and their estimate for this week was that the top of the world was no colder than minus 23 Celsius; six degrees warmer than Saskatoon’s Wednesday low of minus 29. Meanwhile, the South Pole — which is consistently the colder of the two poles — is minus 23.

ALBERTA’S WARMEST PLACE WAS ALMOST AS COLD AS MARS

As Alberta was plunged into extreme cold warnings on Boxing Day, it was ironically the mountainous parts of the province that were its warmest. Banff and Jasper both escaped the “extreme cold” label by recording lows of only minus 19. This means that, for a few minutes, all of Alberta was about as cold as Mars’ Gale Crater, the home of the Curiosity rover. Mars is subject to pretty violent temperatures shifts, and Curiosity regularly encounters temperatures below minus 80. But this week, the highest temperature experienced by the rover were -23 degrees. A Calgary Boxing Day shopper, therefore, might have found themselves getting into a car that was literally colder than a Martian spacecraft.

VANCOUVER IS AS COLD AS MOSCOW

Vancouver may be Canada’s Mediterranean right now, but on Wednesday afternoon its two degrees Celsius was exactly the same temperature as Vladimir Putin’s back garden. Moscow is famous for its bleak, army-swallowing, existence-questioning winters. But apparently, it’s just as bracing to take a holiday stroll on Granville Island as in Red Square.