1. Could you please specify what era you're interested in? In 2006, 50.3% of people living in the Northwest Territories identified themselves as Aboriginal Canadians (First Nations, Metis, Inuit, or multiple/other Aboriginal identities), along with 20% of people in Yukon and 85% of people in Nunavut. Their methods of dealing with winter, and reasons for living where they do (or rather, in 1997) will obviously be quite different from 1957 or 1857 or 1657.

2. This is a little sideways, but: if you're interested in pre-colonial or early colonial era, I have an earlier answer on how Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Quebec confronted winters. It talks a lot about what/how the Jesuits learned from the Montagnais nation (and in some cases, what the Montagnais knew and did that the Jesuits didn't or couldn't do).

I'll excerpt some of the relevant portions and add in more details:

~~

The "Jesuit Relations" of the 17th and 18th centuries have a lot to say about the challenges and benefits faced by early European settlers--in this case, Jesuit missionaries--in the deep of winter in "these wretched lands." A theme that emerges, over and over, is that winter makes travel easier and being indoors harder.

Fr. Paul le Jeune, arriving in Quebec in 1632, describes learning how to walk with snowshoes from the local Montagnais--he was so sure he was going to fall on his face at first, with every step he took--but he had grown quite skilled (though not as good as the Montagnais).

In 1640, Fr. Joseph Marie Chaumonot wrote back to Rome...[the Jesuits] probably used snowshoes as well--Chaumonot tells us that among the Hurons, snowshoe-making is very specifically the women's task. Le Jeune describes the Montagnais using their snowshoes to shovel, but I'm not sure whether the Jesuits adopted that practice. For transportation across unfrozen waterways, like the St. Lawrence River, the Montagnais would use their canoes as in summer. Over the snow, they pulled sleighs or sleds made of wood.

...[The Jesuits] weren't hunters, so while (writes Le Jeune enviously) the Montagnais were chowing down on moose, the Jesuits ate dried eel (which, yes, they had known to eat--and maybe were getting from?--Native women). Le Jeune writes that winter actually aided the Montagnais in catching eels:

This work is done entirely by the women, who empty the fish, and wash them very carefully, opening them, not up the belly but up the back; then they hang them in the smoke, first having suspended them upon poles outside their huts to drain. They gash them in a number of places, in order that the smoke may dry them more easily. The quantity of eels which they catch in the season is incredible.

Winter was also the season for moose hunting (and hence, eating):

On the 19th [of December], the snow being already very deep, they captured eight elks or moose. About that time one of them, named Nassitamirineou, and surnamed by the French Brehault, told them that he had dreamed that they must eat all of those Moose; and that he knew very well how to pray to God, who had told him that it was his will that they should eat all, and that they should give none of them away, if they wanted to capture others. [The Montagnais] believed him, and did not give a piece to the Frenchmen.

Father de Noue, another Jesuit, told Le Jeune his experiences of traveling with a group of (I think) Montagnais:

The inns found on the way are the woods themselves, where at nightfall they stop to camp; each one unfastens his snowshoes, which are used as shovels in cleaning the snow from the place where they are going to sleep. The place cleaned is usually made in the form of a circle; a fire is made in the very middle of it, and all the guests seat themselves around it, having a wall of snow behind them, and the Sky for a roof.

The wine of this inn is snow, melted in a little kettle which they carry with them, provided they do not wish to eat snow in lieu of drink. Their best dish is smoked eel. As they must carry their blankets with them for cover at night, they load themselves with as few other things as possible.

And modern practice to the contrary, drinking chocolate is actually a Central American tradition.

~~

The Jesuit Relations are available for free online in English translation! I suggest opening a few volumes and searching for snow, ice, and related terms if you're further interested in this particular topic.

I'll add in a few things - often mass snow dumps and cold weather don't go hand in hand. Normally when I see it snowing that's a sign that it's warm. People did and do a lot of things to survive in winter in weather down to much colder than -30.

• people gathered in houses with fires in them.

• In many places the majority of the food for the winter was gathered during the summer. This includes fish, berries, nuts, and roots, all staples of diet. In communities that lived along almost every river in British Columbia (most of the communities, all of this seasonal harvesting constituted the majority of food, and was done in generally fixed locations at fixed times. Meat as well was often seasonal - think of the caribou and buffalo migrations/hunts by various Dene and Inuit groups in the far north, and by various buffalo hunting groups in the prairies. In particular the Metis big hunt was done once a year, with thousands participating, and going back much further in time we have numerous examples of stationary hunting locations that caught herds at specific points on their yearly migrations. These did not take place in the winter, and people preserved meat by smoking or sun-drying (more smoking the less predictable the water was i.e. closer to the coast). Men did hunt in the winter in almost all cultures, especially after trapping became a major economic force, but it often wasn't as necessary for survival as it later became when people began to be involved in more economic activities during the summer. For example along the coast, midwinter was ceremony season. In addition, my grandfather survived a lot of his childhood by snaring a lot of food close by wherever he was camping, and having your snares out every night or checking your snares every day is a pretty easy way of getting some food. Snaring food was/is a common way for kids to start trapping, and rabbits and squirrels snared are a normal part of many winter diets. These are still generalities, as Inuit for example hunted a lot in the winter, and resources vary a lot from place to place. Winter hunting was always an important fall back when accidents happened, and the men being gone a lot was also a fairly useful form of birth control.

• people were skilled at building shelters of all kinds. In the north (north of the tree line) in Inuit country people built igloos, travel igloos, snow caves, or even just wind breaks out of snow. This is of course when they are on the land and not in permanent settlements which often had permanent houses made of turf as well as igloos. These could be heated by body heat and seal-oil lamps, generally with multiple wicks. In places such as the Mackenzie delta, despite there being no trees there could be lots of driftwood and fires were fine, in fact some people still heat their houses with wood today using driftwood entirely in the area. Further south in British Columbia people lived in pit houses and hide houses, and could make many kinds of shelters easily and quickly, as well as fires. Harlan Smith lists eight types of houses used just by the Nuxalk, and other first nations as well built a range of shelters for various functions and needs. By and large these houses would be as warm or warmer than our houses, they just might take more wood to keep that way Having spent time in a long house, a good fire in the middle can warm a very large building quite quickly. That said, people who spend a lot of time in the cold can get used to it through acclimation. For example, I camp in winter with a sleeping bag, groundpad, and warm clothing. My cousin hikes in jeans, and will wrap up in a tarp in freezing weather and just go to sleep. I don't recommend it, but when you're used to it, a person can function in very cold weather. This includes adaptations like hunter's reflex where many Inuit can work all day barehanded in minus thirty weather pulling in nets, without their hands freezing because their body will pump blood to their fingers every little while to keep them warm.

• people had very good clothing, much of it still the equal to technical clothing made today. Fur-lined well made clothing is really quite warm. Also, the snow doesn't really make you that wet if you have good clothing on. It's well enough insulated that body heat doesn't make the snow melt, and if its cold enough, even more so. In particular people were careful of overexerting themselves and getting wet as a result. Caribou skin parkas are still used, sealskin leggings and mukluks are still used, and fur-lined clothing is still used today and is considered very adequate.

• If you sent me out in my coat, with a blanket and food, I do know how I would survive, and I that's the primary difference. Just like today, in the past people knew how to survive, and that made it normal. First Nations went in to areas that had resources, and they used the technologies and education needed to survive in those areas. Warmer areas were more populated, and with the right technologies, you could move in to places where nobody else was living and have abundance. That said, almost all of Canada's first nations people have migrated north to south, not the other way around, so if anything it's been warm weather tech that people have had to develop over the years.

Relevant sources - for a really detailed description of plant use, see Nancy Turner's two volume set on the topic, covering Northwestern North America.

Turner, Nancy (2014). Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America.

You can get Harlan Smith's books from the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Almost any collection of northern stories will tell you a lot about survival methods, as will writing by early explorers who analyzed the methods as they learnt them and often wrote about how not to die. One book in particular I enjoyed was the following:

Mishler, Craig, ed. Neerihiinjìk: We Traveled from Place to Place: the Gwich’in Stories of Johnny and Sarah Frank. 2nd ed. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 2001.

this book really tells a lot about survival in the North, and I can't recommend it too highly, though my primary interest in it is because of the cultural information.