BRRR! It’s another classic winter – morning fogs clearing to brilliant, sunny days but biting cold, real brass-monkey weather.

After more than 25 years in the national capital I’ve pretty much adapted to Canberra winters. It was a struggle at first after living in Adelaide and then Brisbane.

I don’t think we really take winter seriously enough.

Recently, I’ve been struck by the number of foreign-born friends, colleagues and acquaintances who have remarked to me how cold they find Canberra.

I’m talking not about folk from the subtropics, rather Brits, Canadians and even Russians. Some Canadian friends recently told me that they had never experienced a colder winter than here.

I was disbelieving. After all, Ottawa’s winters are pretty severe. They have snow for about 120 days and in January the average daily maximum is minus 6C, while at night the mercury plunges to minus 15C.

But my friends had a point. Canadian winters are freezing, but Canadians deal with it. Their homes are well protected, double glazed with efficient heating. Shopping precincts are entirely enclosed and schools and university campuses are similarly designed.

Not so in Canberra. Our Canadian friends were shivering inside as much as out.

Many Canberra homes are poorly designed for our winters, especially older ones. We don’t take heating and insulation seriously enough. Many of our schools are well designed for the summer heat, but our kids get pretty chilled in the winter months.

Our city’s commercial and entertainment precincts also leave a lot to be desired when the temperature starts to drop.

It’s not for nothing that the Skate in the City ice rink, presently operating in Civic, stays frozen with little effort from its refrigeration plant.

And there’s plenty of evidence of cold-climate denial – ill-clad, half-frozen joggers pounding through the morning mist are a common sight. I’m not sure how many end up with pneumonia, but I reckon quite a few do.

Often we drive with no regard for the winter weather. Travelling on the Tuggeranong Parkway in the early morning last week, I couldn’t help but be struck by the propensity of folk to speed in what was a pea-soup fog. With visibility somewhere between 50 and 100 metres, maintaining a speed of 100 kmph was reckless, but virtually everyone was driving as if it was a clear, sunny day. The possibility of black ice clearly hadn’t entered anyone’s head.

Things may eventually warm up with climate change, but in the meantime maybe we ought to make a bid for the Winter Olympic Institute of Australia to relocate from Melbourne to here – co-location with the Australian Institute of Sport would make a lot of sense, especially with our morning frosts. Canberra is Australia’s cold-weather capital and maybe we ought to really embrace that.