Okay, I was down on Robson Street this afternoon. It was but a mild, picture-perfect winter's day: large flakes of snow drifting languidly and nary a trace of wind to be felt. Perfect it would have been, except for having nearly lost an eye to an umbrella -- not once, but thrice. Yes folks, an umbrella, in the snow. Now, perhaps I may be just a tad uncivilized, but where I'm from (a place where snow falls far more frequently and with greater insistence than does here in Vancouver), we wear something called a hat when it snows. Umbrellas are reserved for other, wetter forms of precipitation, such as rain. Could a native Vancouverite please explain this unusual trend to me? I must add that it was not an isolated matter of one or two individuals, but rather a whole Robson Street full of umbrella-toting shoppers going merrily about their ways without so much as a modicum of consideration for my eyesight. Why the umbrellas in the snow, prithee do tell?
