One way to determine how cold a region is, is to count how many days it is how many degrees below 18 degrees C in metric, or below 65F in Imperial.
This is one of the measures used to determine the heating needs for a house. The US and Canada both measure Degree Days, but do not use the same systems and the measurements are not directly convertible. Only France uses the same system as Canada, and it's not very cold there, except on the top of the mountains.