Well,
After 3 days of being completely cold soaked, I decided to bring in the big guns. I called an old timer friend, MB mechanic for 35 years, currently one of Greyhound's chief mechanics. We brought my battery inside for a while and gave it a 12v10a charge. 2 hours later, we put it back in the car. In the mean time, I had positioned an portable electric element stove underneath the crank case. The smell was foul, however, it did warm the oil up a fair bit. Mother nature cooperated too, bringing the temp up to a balmy -5C. I can't tell you how warm -5 feels after -35, I was outside in just a long sleeved shirt.
Well, we installed the battery and hooked heavy duty cables up to my friends 190 diesel. As I cranked her over, Cyril shot a blast of ether into the filter housing. We repeated that process about 10 times, then we decided to warm up in his running car. We let my battery charge for another 15 minutes or so. Then Cyril got in my car and cranked it over. As the cranking slowed down, he shouted for me to throw in a shot of ether. I did and the engine sped up and finally roared to life. He squeezed the throttle for a full 5 minutes.

Moral of the story: the block heater requires BOTH ends to be plugged in (go figure), and -35 requires additional considerations (synthetic, battery heater, crank case heater).

-Joey