I bumped a Hazelnut topic on Permies last year with inquiries, and after some research Hazelnuts actually seem to grow better
in the Wild up north rather than south, so one could speculate they are able to produce pretty well with our short seasons :)
This Alberta nursery says 2a, which would be Fort McMurray territory. I'd go with S Bengji's advice and take the plunge.
https://treetime.ca/productsList.php?pcid=114&tagid=8
You could try ordering from
GrimoNut, as their parent stock is based off plants grown in the prairies, but are hybridized. They are from Ontario and the site says that the nuts ripen at the end of August, but since the prairies get the most sunshine-hours in all of Canada, it helps us catch up with our shorter season, so I'd say end of August/early September sounds about right. They sold all their hazelnuts before March last year when I was checking the site. I have never dealt with them, so I can't give much insight other than that. (they have
good hazelnut credentials though)
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An interesting observation this year: I was repairing
fence on some rented pasture and the owners have a u-pick type setup, where they apparently got very few berries because of cold spring weather. But while I was fencing only 1km away from that u-pick, I stopped for 15 minutes to eat wild serviceberries(saskatoons) and every plant was filled. I could be wrong in my hypothesis, but since the wild plants were located half way up a hill, the frost didn't do damage as it couldn't accumulate like it did at the bottom of hill where the u-pick was located. Also, about 300ft down the hill was a swampy area, which I guess helped to moderate the temperature at night.
So as Marco notes, have a good location planned out and there is little reason to worry. There isn't much you can do to mitigate the negative impacts of snow in June though, besides curse :P (I was one of the few who was in the path of a 2km strip of ping-pong sized hail during a storm in July, and that's what I did lol)