One of my sisters appears to have one of the Ice Angels series (or probably one of the precursors to it judging by the age, but the flower looks like Ice Follies"). She lives in Delaware County, PA, which has been a Zone 7 for some time. Hers, inherited by the previous owner of the house (who was also the original owner when the house was built in the '50s), is several decades old and is probably close to 10 - 12ft tall. It is also a spring bloomer (starting around April and going into May). Neither she nor I nor any of the old-timers who live on her street who were also original owners - most in their 80s now, knew what it was! We just haven't seen these up here - at least prominently in the landscape. Once I ID'd it thanks to GW, on a visit to my sis when she had a BBQ for the neighbors, I let them all know and they were appreciative since all loved it over the many years.

My sister and her DH have only lived in the house for 3 years now, but just from observations, it will get some winter burn on the leaf tips but the buds seem to do very well down here. It was planted across from a neighbor's garage wall in a south-facing location. She had since put up a 6ft privacy fence between the garage and her property, so the protection should be similar or even better.

These are very slow-growing and I expect it has taken hers ~30 - 40 years to get to that size. Depending on how big a shrub you buy, it could take at least a decade or two to get to 6ft. I don't know how hardy the buds are but they seem to skirt our late frosts and snows down here. I can't vouch for your weather up there. We haven't had below 0° F in 11 years. I think most northern gardeners have the fall-blooming ones so they don't have to worry about late frosts in spring that can decimate the spring-bloomers.

Here's what hers looked like last year (we were by there Easter this year and it had alot of nice fat flower buds on it):

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This looks like it was quite a while ago. 2005? Did you plant Winter Snowman?
I did about that same time. We are a bit south of Boston. As far north as we are, it blooms in late Nov. until a heavy freeze. After last winter there are only a few buds, but it was the only Ackerman hybrid I had to have survived the winter. And unfortunately, the current freeze has hit before it bloomed.
The better performer is Survivor from Camellia Forest NC. It blooms earlier before Halloween, with a profusion of flowers, until a freeze like this one hits, but still has good buds that can flower if it does warm up again next week.

I live in Providence, and I have 5 camellias. One fall bloomer is "Snow Flurry". It has been totally hardy here for over 15 years. Blooms late October, and continues until a hard freeze. This year it bloomed until early January. I also have some spring bloomers, two are "April Blush"and one each of "April Dawn" and "April Kiss". The larger "April Blush" is about seven feet tall and six feet wide. It was started in 2004. The other one is four feet by four feet and was in a pot until 2010. The other two were planted out about five years ago from four inch pots. I got "April Blush" locally, and "April Dawn" and "April Kiss" at Logee's in Danielson, CT, but I'm not sure if they still offer it. But you can get any of these and many more hardy varieties from Camforest Nurseries. (www.camforest.com). Here's my largest "April Blush".

This is a very old thread, but if jenny_in_SE_PA is viewing this, I think your camellia is 'Kumasaka'. It's a very old and very hardy cultivar.