[haversine]

Most people assume that it's horrible up here but to give you a "sort of" average idea for the whole country, you are looking at a range between a hot month of 30C and a cold month of -30C if you're only going as north as Ottawa. Winter is three months like anywhere else but it tends to begin in November and end in March (get it? ha-ha)

There are local sub climates like anywhere else of course, so if you're living on the far east coast, or next to the west coast mountains, you'll get worse and better climate, respectively.

[PeterWhittaker]

You forgot to mention our lovely Ottawa Valley humidity. While this summer has been relatively dry (27 only feels 31 today), we usually get a few stifling weeks in either July or August (sometimes both) where the highs are mid 30s+ and the humidity 90+%. Ugh.

My wife and I went to the US southwest a few years ago. When we left LA it was a bearable 115F (dry as a bone). We got home to 21C and had to start the AC because we couldn't breathe - it took us a day or so to reacclimatize, it was so humid.

You also left out how windy our Ottawa winters can be, and how much snow we can get (cf, e.g., http://ottawa.weatherstats.ca/metrics/snow.html)

There's a reason we invented humidex and issue so many wind chill warnings.

(Ottawa is one of the most beautiful cities ever, and was recently ranked fourth most livable city in Canada by MoneySense, after Calgary and two suburbs of Edmonton. Not bad for an urban area of about ~1M with sticky hot summers, frigidly cold winters, and some of the most aggressive drivers ever (we really do need to chill). It makes up for these with a splendid natural setting, ready access to nature and the arts, and only one major source of pollution, the car.)

[randlet]

Yes Ottawa is a great city but the climate is really bad (even when compared to somewhere as close as Toronto). The end of May/beginning of June and late Sept are usually ok...

I must be one of those aggressive drivers because I can't believe how slowly everyone seems to merge onto the 417 :)

[PeterWhittaker]

Sigh, tell me about it. I made a comment to my wife the other day about how the person ahead of us actually maintained speed going into an intersection, accelerated in the merge lane, and merged onto the 416 unexpectedly well, impeding neither me (behind him the whole time) or anyone else.

"Ah, soul mates", she said, sighing and shaking her head.

(All three of us complain near ceaselessly about how poorly our neighbours navigate the rounabout we've had nearly a year. The ones who stop in the middle to let in others nearly cause apoplexy.)