I'm A Newcomer To Canada & Here's Why Mocking Vancouverites In The Snow Is Problematic AF

The views expressed in this Opinion article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.

It's the same story every time it snows in Vancouver. The flurry of memes. The videos of stranded cars. The rest of Canada shaking their heads before yelling, "You call that snow?"

From what I gather as a newbie to this country, the consensus from those east of the Rockies seems to be to make fun of Vancouver — especially its drivers — any time it snows.

Don't get me wrong, the chaos that ensues at the first snowflake in Raincouver is social media gold (hello, snowplow getting stuck in the snow).

And there's an undeniable pleasure in seeing a supercar struggling without winter tires. But the longer I live here and the more articles I see, the more I've noticed there's an uncomfortable racial element to it.

Like many newcomers to Vancouver, I didn't grow up with snow

I was born in Hong Kong and grew up in England, and until I moved to Canada, I'd never had the occasion to drive in snow. I'm not the only one. From 2000 to 2022, most immigrants to Canada had come from India, followed by China and the Philippines — countries that are not exactly known for their winter driving requirements.

I mention this because nearly 42 percent of Metro Vancouver's population are immigrants — a proportion second only to Canada's most populous city, Toronto.

Vancouver faces unique challenges when it snows

Of course, it doesn't snow as much here.

But when it does, you have a city with the second-highest percentage of recent immigrants facing road conditions that other major cities like Toronto don't face thanks to their drier snow, flatter terrain and massive snow-removal budgets.

Montreal tops the charts with $187 million allocated in its annual budget for snow removal, according to CBC News. Toronto takes second place with $109 million.

Plucky little Vancouver? $4 million. Even if you include all of Metro Vancouver, CBC News reported that’s only $10 million, the lowest by far of the major Canadian cities.

So when people laugh at Vancouver for being bad with snow, how much of that — intentionally or otherwise — lands on newcomers not used to snow, living in a city ill-equipped to handle it?

Obviously, when people share videos of abandoned buses on snowy streets, they aren't being racist. There are legitimate issues with infrastructure, but that gets lost in all the memes.

From winter tires to warm clothes, everything is up for comment

It doesn't stop with driving, either. The other target of ridicule seems to be the way Vancouverites dress for snow. Other provinces sneer because while they're walking around in a sweatshirt, we're reaching for the Helly Hansen. Mock public transit, or the fact that YVR essentially shuts down — fine. But calling people out for wearing warm clothes?

Twitter user Ashra Kolhatkar put it best when she wrote, "People from temperate regions of the world have historically been ascribed virtues of physical beauty, diligence, intelligence, and rationality, while people from the tropics were called ugly, lazy, stupid, and superstitious. That is: inferior."

"It's not a big step, then, for our relative abilities to tolerate different types of weather and climate to retain these moral ascriptions. Hard-working cold lover vs. lazy sun seeker," she added. "If you say, 'Gosh, it's cold!', they'll say, 'Psh. This?! This isn't cold!' They want you to know they're better than you."

"They'll also primly tell you, 'Oh no, I absolutely can't function in the heat! Anything above 25°C and I just *die*!'"

I call it "snowperiority."

We all bring our different lived experiences

For me as a working-class kid in Hong Kong, snow was synonymous with privilege. Experience of it meant that your family was either well-off enough to holiday in Japan or rich enough for the States. The closest I got was an ice-skating rink at the mall.

Now I live in Vancouver, in a predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese part of the city. I walk outside and see little kids delighting in a dusting of snow. A young woman takes selfies while dressed for an Arctic expedition.

And I can't understand why anyone would find it necessary to say, "You call that snow?"