English: A highway sign in White River, Ontario promoting the town as "The Coldest Spot in Canada – 72 below Zero". The photo was taken in 1973 when Fahrenheit was still the most commonly used temperature scale in Canada, being replaced by Celsius later in the decade.

White River advertises itself as "The Coldest Spot in Canada" with recorded temperatures as low as −72 °F (−58 °C). However, this is a myth as the coldest temperature in Canada has been recorded in Snag, Yukon, at −62.8 °C on 3 February 1947. Even in Ontario, the coldest place is Iroquois Falls at −58.3 °C (23 January 1935), which is the lowest temperature reported in Eastern Canada too. White River's reputation for coldest area is probably based on the fact that for many years its reported temperature was deemed "the coldest in the nation today" from the handful of stations reporting daily temperature extremes in newspapers and on radio, climatological stations data being only available monthly to Environment Canada.