It is my understanding that Osmanthus need less water during the winter but you need keep it close to bright window. If you can keep it indoor, keep it away from heater or warm air intake area. Cool room is Okay. Good luck!

Hmm, bright light..that could be a problem in the garage. I think I'll just leave it where it is for now (sheltered area near the house). It came thru last winter without losing one leaf, but this winter, the freeze and strong winds did their damage.

My michelia figo (indoors) is not doing well either. The leaves turned back around the edges and dropped off, and new leaves come out but droop too. I guessed that maybe the room (bathroom - hoping for humidity) was too warm so I have moved it to the living room, which is very cool (the gardenia thrives there). Any comments on what might be wrong? If it survives to spring, it'll go outside and I'll eventually plant it into the ground, as I heard it can overwinter here.

Osmanthus should be hardy enough to grow in BC area. The leave dropping could be the sign of other problem. If every thing goes well next spring. Consider to plant it in ground.

If you can grow M. maudiae you should be able to grow M. figo and osmanthus outdoors. If it was me, I'd put them outside on the south side of the house and only bring it in if it gets below 25 or so. But I'm not really good at keeping plants alive indoors so maybe that's why taking them outdoors sounds so good to me.
Around here M. maudiae gets killed during the winter unless you plant a really big one, but M. figos and osmanthus does just fine, M. figos show winter damage but spring back from it, and osmanthus doesn't get damaged at all.

I only have this osmanthus in a pot because I wanted it placed in my little courtyard between the house & garage, which is paved. It's part of my "potted garden" and I'm just trying to cram more plants into whatever areas I have. I have another osmanthus in the ground and it only dropped a few leaves after the severe windstorms. Actually, now I think I should have placed the pot in another corner, as it is more protected. I have a rose tree there, and it still hasn't dropped one leaf!
Anyway, I hope the osmanthus recovers, because the flowers were so fragrant this past fall.

You know what? I was looking around my garden today at all of the osmanthus, and noticed that 2 of them had dropped their leaves and are trying to make new ones. These 2 were the ones in the most shade. None of my osmanthus that are in the shade grow very many leaves, but these 2 were almost naked! Maybe dropping leaves is an adaptation it makes?

Aagh - more snow! We are getting unusually bad weather up here. We're "lucky" if we get snowfall once a year, yet this is the third heavy snowfall (6") this winter, and now temps tonight might dip down to -7c.
Last night, we got all this fluffy stuff, and since my michelia maudiae is evergreen, all the leaves got so weighed down, so I had to go out and knock the snow off. Today, it looks so miserable and frozen.
I moved my potted osmanthus to a more sheltered corner. Poor thing. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will pop out new foliage come spring.