Bizarre semantic of Mat

Today I (finally) looked through the documentation of Mat() — and it
seems to be very convenient for interactive usage!  On the other hand,
such “cute” semantics have a tendency to become a limiting factor when
one wants to write down general-purpose algorithms… 

Is there a simple way to convert a vector-column into a 1 column
matrix (without using matrix())?  Mat() is almost there — except for
bizarre special-cases — which are impossible to switch off!

Thanks,
Ilya