It's interesting that in your mostly fictionalized account of Vancouver's allegedly paralyzed reaction to the weather, you chose to dog-whistle the word "cosmopolitain" in the sub-headline. What does Vancouver's diversity have to do with anything? Here's what I think: I think you're writing clickbait, to appeal to your mostly white, mostly suburban or rural core subscriber base. I think you're picking up on a trend in journalism that helped usher in Brexit and Trump, where the virtues of "small town salt-of-the-earth rural folk" are contrasted with an imaginary "soft, urban elite". I think the unnecessary use of the term "cosmopolitain" proposes a deliberate subtext that is something like "Chinese and brown people just don't understand Canadian Winter, AMIRITE??!". 

Incidentally, "cosmopolitan" centres like Van are by definition diverse,  meaning they're not subject to easy stereotyping and generalization, which is the sum total of the contents of this article. Also, what riots???