VANCOUVER -- A UBC student is urging others to think twice before judging a car and its driver based on its licence plates.
Second-year film studies student Brynn Weigelt says her car, which has Ontario licence plates, was vandalized while she was skiing with friends at Grouse Mountain on Friday afternoon.
“When I came down (the mountain) there was a note on my car,” she said.
“At first I thought it was a parking ticket.”
But when she unfolded the piece of paper, she saw that it was scrawled with a nasty message, saying “go home and stay home.”
She then went around to the side of the car to let her friends in, and saw that the car itself had been vandalized.
“The entire passenger side of the car had been keyed, really aggressively and all over the door,” she said.
Weigelt said she’s in contact with Grouse Mountain to see if the resort’s surveillance cameras might have caught the vandal in action.
Although she lives in B.C., Weigelt hasn’t had to change her licence plates because she’s a full time student. But, she has lots of stickers on the vehicle – including ones from UBC, Whistler and Tofino
“I was crying, I was really upset that somebody thought that that was an appropriate reaction to seeing a licence plate that’s out of province,” she said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Weigelt says she remembers seeing people with out-of-Canada license plates put notes on the front dash of their cars, telling others that despite the plates, they live in B.C.
“I remember people at the beginning of the pandemic doing that, and I thought ‘I don’t need to do that because other Canadians won’t do that to me,’” she said.
Now, that’s changed.
“I put signs in my car that say that I live here and that I’m from UBC,” she said.
Weigelt said she is waiting to hear from her insurance provider in Ontario about whether any of the damage will be covered.
With files from CTV News Vancouver's Alissa Thibault.
