I live IN Canada about half an hour north of Lake Ontario and it's not THAT cold here. I used to live in town right on Lake Ontario (a 15 minute walk). Up where I am now we get as low as - 25 most of the time in the winter, but our winter doesn't start until around the end of November and most times early to mid December (we only just got snow! and the coldest it's been is -7... and we're north of the Lake! which is traditionally colder!). We're not at ALL religious and we live in some pretty deep countryside with a enormous population of OLD families... from like... the origination of many of the towns around here. We've found we've been accepted pretty well by our neighbours and most people are very nice in the smaller communities. Occasionally you get some rude people who are either just up for hunting or naturally unkind but that's not very common.
When we moved in, we were the horse people from the city (We had horses before moving to the country) and our long time cow farmer neighbour brought over cookies and plowed our driveway and welcomed us right away.
That house you're looking at? Is a GREAT deal for that much land. We paid $161,000 for 8 acres with a fixer-upper 1860s farm house, unuseable barn, and no fences. Does the house have a woodstove? If it does, the cold won't matter much to you! We don't have a woodstove yet (someone took it out in the 80s, but we're putting one back in in the next couple years). Woodstoves are worth their weight in gold.
To give you the itch, it's December 8th and it only just snowed out yesterday. We only have about 2 or 3 inches of snow, it's ONLY -5 Celcius out and very sunny. Only one of my horses is wearing a blanket and thats only a waterproof turnout shell and she has arthritis! (I bought her a new midweight blanket for the winter but she doesn't need it yet and won't until about January).
And when it's too cold to go out? You drink hot chocolate and eat yummy gingerbread cookies and just relax!
And these are from around October... How could you not love the countryside? And you'll be so close to the border here if you ever need a vacation, Ontario is very nice in the summer
Look, even my wimpy chickens came out in the snow!
ETA: House Size: 1300 Sq. Ft (town says we're 2000 but the whole upstairs is in the eaves). 3+1 fairly large bedrooms (the one downstairs is actually a family room with propane fireplace but my dad was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago and has a defecit on his right side and finds stairs a chore sometimes), 1.5 bathrooms, Office, HUGE eat in kitchen, Purpose built laundry room. 1860's farm house 2 layer brick on one side, wood on the other. With a crawl space and cellar. Forced air oil heating and baseboard heaters. Propane stove/fireplace.