If summer is Canada’s welcome party, winter is the senior immigration officer — unbending, unsmiling, and fully in charge.

Every immigrant has a first-winter story. The shock. The betrayal. The mourning of toes. Here are three short stories from our community, stitched together like a quilt of cold memories and unexpected tenderness — in their own words.

1. NNEKA — Toronto, 2021

Nneka laughs now when she remembers that first winter. Back then, it was not funny.

“Nobody told me cold has personality,” she says. “In Nigeria, cold is just… weather. Here, cold has agenda.”

Her first snowfall looked magical. Instagrammable. Soft. She stood at the window of her basement apartment, recording a video for family back home.

“See snow o!” she whispered into her phone. “Canada is fine, abeg.”

The next morning, she opened the door and reality slapped her in the face — and on the feet.

“I just saw white everywhere,” she recalls. “My steps, the driveway, everything was covered. Then my landlord just smiled and said, ‘It’s your turn to shovel!’ as if he was inviting me to a barbecue.”

She didn’t even know how to hold the shovel properly.

“I started crying,” she says. “Not small tears. The ‘What am I doing here?’ tears.”

She cried.
Then she dug.

“The first time I slipped ehn, I saw my whole life. Twice. I said, ‘God, I’m not ready to die in this country because of ice.’”

Later that day, someone knocked on her door. It was Mr. Desmond, an elderly Jamaican neighbour she’d only seen in passing.

He held a mug and a plastic tool.

“He just said, ‘Come, daughter. Take this ginger tea. And this is a scraper. Stop using your bare hands to fight ice.’”

She smiles as she remembers it.

“Then he told me, ‘It gets easier, yuh hear?’ And I don’t know why, but I believed him. In that moment, I felt like maybe I could survive this place.”

2. MUSA — Winnipeg, 2019

If Nneka’s winter was rude, Musa’s winter was violent.

“I came from Kano,” he says. “Dry season heat. Dust. But at least my eyelashes were not freezing.”

His first week in Winnipeg, he tried to be a good sport.

“I said, ‘Let me take selfie in the snow so my people will know I’ve arrived.’”

He stepped outside, smiled for the camera… and immediately regretted his life choices.

“My teeth started paining me,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t even know teeth can be cold like that. My phone too just froze small. It was like, ‘My brother, we were not built for this.’”

The real test came one night when he missed his bus.

“Google Maps said 18 minutes’ walk,” he explains. “But my soul said 3 hours and 45 regrets.”

The wind slapped his face. His ears burned. His fingers tingled.

“I was talking to myself like a mad man,” he says. “‘Musa, why didn’t you stay in Nigeria and mind your business?’”

But somewhere along that long, frozen walk, something shifted.

“There was this moment,” he remembers quietly. “The street was quiet. The snow was shining under the streetlights like small diamonds. My breath was just hanging in the air. For the first time, I felt… calm.”

He pauses.

“I still hate the cold,” he says, laughing. “Let’s be very clear. But that night taught me something: you can survive anything if the path is lit — even faintly. I tell myself that all the time now. About winter. About life.”

3. TOLA & THE GLOVES — Calgary, 2020

Tola’s first winter mistake was simple: she chose vibes over insulation.

“I bought fine gloves,” she admits. “Fashion gloves. Instagram gloves. Those gloves lied to me.”

She stepped out of her apartment feeling cute — long coat, matching scarf, thin black gloves.

“The wind just asked me, ‘Are you okay?’” she says. “Within 40 seconds, my fingers disappeared. I could see them, but I could not feel them.”

In the confusion, she dropped her house keys.

“I didn’t even notice,” she says. “My brain was just shouting, ‘Enter somewhere! Anywhere!’”

She power-walked to the bus stop, shaking her hands like she was trying to fling the cold away.

Then she heard someone behind her.

“‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ This lady was running after me,” Tola recalls. “She was Filipina, smallish, with the kindest eyes. She held up my keys and said, ‘You dropped this.’”

Then the woman looked at her gloves and gave her a sympathetic smile.

“She just touched my hand gently and said, ‘You need better gloves, my friend.’ Not in a rude way. Just… caring.”

Tola’s voice softens.

“That thing touched me,” she says. “Back home, kindness is loud — neighbours, family, everybody in your business. Here, kindness is quieter. But it’s there. In strangers. In small moments. That day, I decided I wouldn’t let the cold turn me hard.”

The First Winter Always Leaves a Mark

On your body.
On your pride.
On your sense of geography.
But also on your heart.

“Winter humbled me,” Nneka says. “But it also introduced me to community.”

“It made me slower, more reflective,” Musa adds. “You walk differently when you’re watching your steps.”

“It taught me to look out for people,” Tola says. “If I see anyone outside with fine-but-useless gloves now, I intervene.”

The cold humbles you.
Community warms you.

And somehow, between slipping on ice and learning how to layer like a pro, you become someone braver than the person who arrived.