In Canada ... and it's winter

Beginning of October we moved from France to Canada, with two big suitcases each and Carmen, the cat. The rest of our things were moved in a large container by boat. A week ago the container arrived, so now we're finally settled in our new house in Ontario.
Everybody talks about the winter, especially about the winter beginning of this year when they had a record-braking amount of snow. Difficult to imagine for us, because when we arrived we had temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius.  Two days ago however it has all changed into a winter landscape. Is this the beginning of a long winter?