Walking through Boston, Mass. — where I visited in August — I couldn’t help but find Vancouver, B.C., on my mind.

On a rainy day in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood, I once walked with an umbrella tilted forwards to block the angled rainfall, my gaze towards the sidewalk and the passing legs of other pedestrians. It was then that an apparent aberration in the gravity affecting the rainfall stopped me in my tracks: the sideways rainfall was not rain at all but, rather, a stream of urine. A homeless-looking male was so intoxicated that he was facing away from the doorway of a brick heritage building that he intended (I hope) to target.

“Jesus,” I muttered, sidestepping the biohazard and hurriedly getting as far from the man as possible.

There was a time when you could spend a day in Vanc

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