Amy Poehler and Jennifer Lawrence raise eyebrows over Canadian weather comments
Do you think it's always cold in Canada?
This week, American actor Amy Poehler hosted fellow American actor Jennifer Lawrence on her award-winning podcast, Good Hang.
During the podcast episode, which went live on Tuesday, Amy asks Jennifer about the coldest day she ever experienced on set.
She said that it was in Calgary, where she filmed Die, My Love in 2024.
“It was August, so it was supposed to be warm. There weren't any warming coats, and I was just in a T-shirt,” she says in the clip, adding the cold was so upsetting it made her cry (although, to be fair, she said she was pregnant at the time, and that may have contributed to her heightened sensitivity).
"This proves my point that it's never warm in Canada,” Amy replies.
“It's always ... freezing. And it’s freezing in August. Always. And Canadians pretend like, 'Oh, we've had a really nice day,' but no, you did not have a nice day."
Before you assume Amy is someone unaccustomed to Canadian weather, she does have some insider information: She was, after all, married to Toronto native and comedian Will Arnett for 13 years.
The weather conversation only took up about a minute of the roughly hour-long chat, but that was enough to get Canadians talking. This Buzzfeed article points to some Tiktok comments apparently made by Canadians who, for the most part, seem to disagree, pointing out that it’s not uncommon for temperatures to climb near the 30°C mark during our summer.
So, is it always cold in Canada?
That depends on who you ask.
You can measure and document a temperature, but how you “feel” it is a matter of perception.
“The statement ‘it’s always cold in Canada’ might make sense for Amy, Jennifer, and some other Americans,” says Weather Network meteorologist Kelly Sonnenburg.
“That’s because they are acclimatized to warmer weather due to their location. The U.S. is geographically located closer to the equator, so they naturally have a warmer climate and warmer temperatures year-round when compared to Canada.”
Canadians are experts at experiencing temperature relatively.
“When we have a cooler day in Canada in the summer, for example, a high of 15°C, that feels cold. But most of us would find 15°C in the middle of winter warm.”
And Calgary, where Jennifer filmed, is a city that is prone to significant temperature fluctuations over short periods throughout the year.
“That’s due to Calgary’s proximity to the Rocky Mountains,” Kelly says.
“Temperatures have climbed as high as the mid-30s in the midst of summer and dropped as low as the -30s in the heart of winter.”
The most comparable U.S. city to Calgary would be Denver, Colorado, but Calgary’s proximity to the Arctic creates the opportunity for more pronounced temperature drops.
So, it turns out the way a temperature feels is relative to the season and to the environment you’re used to.
For the record, Kelly says she disagrees with the assessment that it always feels cold here, and so do I ... but it looks like we’re all going to have to agree to disagree.
Header image courtesies: Amy Poehler: Gage SKidmore/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 2.0 Jennifer Lawrence: Wikimedia Commons/NASA/Joel Kowsky/Public Domain. Graphic by Cheryl Santa Maria for The Weather Network.