Vancouver

A Vancouver oddity...snow.

I arrived in Vancouver on a warm and rainy day in the middle of February. This was—everyone told me—an anomaly. They never get much snow in Vancouver, even in Febuary, but what with the Olympics going on and everything, the whole town is nervously aware of B.C.’s unusually warm winter.

The first Vancouverite I encountered was the cheerful young girl at the rental car counter who, when she saw my Bunyunesque frame, refused to let me take the little compact car I’d reserved. “You’ll bump your head against the roof of that thing and break your neck,” she said, taking away the keys she’d offered me a moment before. Instead, she was going to upgrade me. For free. To a bright yellow SUV with snow tires.

I said I didn’t think I needed an SUV, thank you very much, particularly since I wasn’t planning on going up to Whistler or any of the other snow venues. Besides, I told her, I’d heard that it was supposed to rain for the next week or so. She told me it was silly to listen to weather forecasts and then offered to show me how to shift the SUV into 4-wheel drive.

Convinced I’d never need this superfluous option, I paid scant attention to her instructions. Aware of my inattentiveness, she stopped her spiel, put a solicitous hand on my shoulder, and said, “Listen, dear. If you put it in 4-wheel drive, it will start snowing. Trust me.”

Well, it rained and it rained as I was driving into the city and in a way, I was glad to have my macho canary-mobile, even if I didn’t really think I’d need the all-drive option. And then a curious thing happened. As I crossed the Granville Bridge over False Creek, splotches of white paste fell from the sky. By the time I turned onto Robson Street, towards my hotel, it was a full on winter storm. The snow was heavy and wet and mostly melted the second it hit the ground. Still, it was snowing. Just like she said it would. Perhaps I should go up to Whistler.

Johnny and Janey in their Flying Machine.

I am hunched up in a seaplane over Vancouver sightseeing with two fretting sexagenarians from England with larval names: Johnny and Janey. We fly low over the water, gliding slowly, deliberately, like a pelican riding air currents searching for sardines. Janey squeezes her eyes shut every time the plane dips or rises and murmurs, “Oh my…oh my,” while Johnny’s large head bobs on his narrow neck like one of those ceramic dogs on a car dashboard. He leans over Janey trying to see things through steamy bifocals held in place by a strip of white athletic tape across the bridge of his scabrous nose.

A gust of wind shakes the little plane like a tree branch and Janey moans like a sick child, burying her face in Johnny’s shoulder. “It’s al’ right, lovey,” he says unconvincingly, patting her leg.

The plane’s engine, droning like a lawn mower, makes conversation difficult. To help us identify what we’re looking at, the pilot nods at the land forms and bodies of water beneath us, shouting out names as if they were train stops or fanciful destinations conjured up from some old children’s book like The Magical Land of Noom. I seem to recall that the nervous but intrepid voyageurs of that 1922 classic, written by the same odd illustrator who gave us Raggedy Ann and Andy, were named Johnny and Janey as well. Perhaps, I think a bit deliriously as we bank sharply to the left, my aged flying companions are the same little boy and girl from the book, now wizened and gray. Perhaps I have really climbed aboard Johnny and Janey’s amazing Flying Machine, and when we land, I will be led on a series of adventures, as were the fictitious Johnny and Janey, by Jingles the Magician, the Princess in the Green Jar, and the exuberant Mr. Tiptoe.

My thoughts are interrupted by the pilot as he bellows out the Vancouver locators beneath us, punctuating each one with a flourishing exclamation mark: “Deadman’s Island!… Lost Lagoon!…Lions Gate!…English Bay!…False Creek!”

Johnny, who has been scowling ever since our little pontoon bird lifted off from Coal Harbour, pokes his wife, who has opened her eyes just long enough to snap a couple of pictures of the Vancouver skyline with a disposable camers. “Water!” he yells.

She cups a hand behind her ear. “What’?”

“Water!” he screams, shaking his head. He starts laughing, uncontrollably. “Water, water, water!” he yells, slapping his hands on his legs for emphasis. Soon, Janey is laughing and chanting with him.

The pilot is perplexed, as am I. But not Janey. She knows exactly what her ol’ Johnny is talkin’ about. “That’s right,” she says as the sky unleashes a torrent of rain so furious that it is impossible to tell sky from sea. “Water…water everywhere. Up and down.” She chuckles and slaps her meaty things with both hands. “That’s what this city’s all about, isn’t it, Johnny? It’s all about water!”

Johnny chuckles and nods. And I realize, as we plop down into Coal Harbour in the midst of this February storm, that Johnny and Janey, crazy as they are, just may have a point.