Blasphemy.

Since I am completely dumb when it comes to vehicles and how to fix them, i'm depending on someone on here to give me some advise.

Starting yesterday I was driving in my van and the thermometer meter on the left of the dashboard, I think that is what you call it. It has cold on the left and hot on the right. Normally it stays in the middle but all of a sudden it went all the way to hot and a red sign came up saying "check gauge".

I opened the hood expecting it to be hot but it was still cold (Im in Canada, it's really cold out.). It seemed like my heater conked out also during all of this.

If anybody has idea what's wrong or what I can do to fix this, please throw your suggestions my way.