The Bookless Club: How do you handle Vancouver's wet weather?

Is it raining?

Why do you even ask? It’s December, after all. Of course, it’s raining.

Years ago, I used to do the weather on what was then BCTV. I can’t remember just how often I had to describe a low-pressure system lodged over the west coast, but the challenge was to find a new way to talk about it. I remember suggesting that it might be an idea to just run the autumn forecast on a loop, or maybe just sum it up as, “Until further notice: rain.” My plan involved the cameraman scanning the weather map, then showing me, with my feet up on the newsdesk, thumbing through a magazine, drinking a cup of coffee. My plan was I’d look up and make the casual remark: “Yeah, that, and more of it,” and go back to my magazine.

If there’s a dependable variable in the Pacific Northwest, it’s rain. For a lot of people, that’s the single worst aspect of living in this region. Way back in 1997, X Files actor David Duchovny found himself in the crosshairs of Vancouverites when he remarked that Vancouver was a “tropical rainforest without the tropics.” He joked that the city got “400 inches of rainfall a day.” Truth be told, we get about 45 inches of rain annually, with November and December being the wettest months … but it sometimes feels like 400 inches, doesn’t it?

Last night, I picked up a friend from his hotel. He moved from Vancouver to Arizona and was back in town for a few days. In the scant few years that he’s been gone, he’s turned into a cat. “Hello!” was replaced with, “How can you live in this climate?!” I was then subjected to the local Arizona weather report along with the favourable property tax rates.

Here’s the thing: I don’t mind the rain. I really don’t. In fact, when I lived in Florida, I’d get positively thrilled on the rare days that it rained. As soon as the first splats of raindrops were evident, I’d be hollering to put the kettle on. Those rare rainy days in the Sunshine State were the only times that the teapot came out. Sure, after a couple of weeks of unrelenting Vancouver precipitation, I start to get gloomy, but generally, it’s like water off the proverbial duck’s back to me. In fact, I never carry an umbrella. I carry a beret in my purse and, when the rain shows up, on goes the beret.

As much as many of us complain about a rainy day, a rainy night has hidden benefits. Many people claim to sleep better when it rains. It turns out that science supports this theory. It’s not for nothing that several of the sleep apps have rainfall soundscapes. The sound of rainfall is known as “pink noise” and creates a calming, meditative state as well as offering a pleasant baffle to sounds that might otherwise disturb sleep. Increased humidity also favours better, deeper sleep as it enhances respiration. Along with rain also comes lowered barometric pressure which can induce the body to slow down and relax.

Language is littered with words about fondness for inclement weather and its consequences. Anything that hinges on the word “pluvial” is a descriptor for rainfall — pluviophile being a “lover of rainfall”. The Portuguese and Spanish language has a weather-derived word for someone whose head is in the clouds — nefelibata, a dreamer. In Iceland, there’s a special word reserved just for jumping in puddles — hoppipolla. Maybe these are something to take comfort in now that the monsoons — originally an Arabic word meaning, seasons — are here.

Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane’s up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com

This week’s question for readers:

Question: How do you handle Vancouver’s wet weather?

Send your answers by email text, not an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at thebooklessclub@gmail.com. We will print some next week in this space.

Last week’s question for readers:

Question: Do you have a book percolating in you?

• In 1977, I began telling my children about characters with strange powers who engaged in epic battles. For the next 45 years, I used fiction writing to set off the fact-based publishing of over 200 scientific medical research papers. In 2025, at 79 years old, I finally published Book 1 of the Grimes Trilogy, “Ancient Ways”. Books 2 and 3 round out a magical world filled with science, philosophy, ethics, romance and action. At wwaynelautt.ca there is a synopsis of all three books. This percolation saved my sanity.

Dr. Wayne Lautt

• I have kept journals since the age of 12, hiding them under the mattress in my teens. Many years later, I attended creative writing classes and joined writing clubs. One summer afternoon in 2018 I met a new neighbour at our annual block party. She asked some questions about my life. After hearing some of the details she gasped and said, “OMG, you should write a book!” So I did. After three years of writing and rewriting with the encouragement of my wonderful editor I finally had 150 copies printed of my memoir. I sold and gifted all but three copies to family, friends and neighbours. I received both positive and negative feedback from the readers. The most memorable comment came from one of my nieces who told me that after reading my book she was inspired to leave her marriage and move from Vancouver to Iceland. She has now lived there for almost three years and she works as a tour guide.

Joan Ellis

• We are the Deeply Shallow Book Club from North Vancouver, which was founded in 2010 by two ladies who loved to read mysteries. We just wrote our own mystery titled, “Murder, We Wrote” and it is a story of murder betrayals and Indigenous art theft, going from London, Paris, Haida Gwaii and Vancouver. There are 12 ladies in our group and we each had a month to write a chapter, so our novella was written in a year. It was so much fun and we are very proud of what we accomplished. To celebrate the 15th anniversary of our club, we planned a getaway in Sechelt. What did we do, you ask? We had an evening of playing murder mystery games.

Jackie Stevenson

• The 12-member Deer Lake Book Club has been around for 30 years. In 2023, our book was published as the first volume of the Book Club Guide To Aging, in a series called Here To Help. The first volume discusses the 18 different living arrangements of potential interest to people as they age, and, in addition, reviews nine books focused on aging. Some reviews are very positive, others are not. The book has been enjoyed by many people related to the 12 of us, although it’s not (yet!) on any bestseller list.

Kate Mancer

• My book has been forming for decades through my diaries, letters, essays and rituals. The themes are already alive: silence and voice, estrangement and chosen family, intimacy versus solitude, the dying art of mail, resilience and the redefinition of motherhood. What I’ve been writing in fragments is the steam rising from a larger vessel. The book is not something I need to invent. It’s something I need to gather, shape and trust — I am already living its pages. 2026 may be the time to bind them into a story only I can tell. When completed, it will sit proudly with the other three already published books.

Debra Dolan

• I was Vancouver’s — and possibly Canada’s — first “out” gay journalist, writing a weekly column in the Georgia Strait from 1970 to 1975. During that time, I chronicled the booming gay club scene and the emerging gay liberation groups, the drag court system, business associations and the gay community centre, now Qmunity. Now, at age 75, I’m pulling together my many stories in the form of a memoir of those early, pre-AIDS days. I’ve received encouragement from many local historians and archivists and I hope to find time to finish the book before I’m, oh, maybe 80? Wish me luck.

Kevin Dale McKeown