PORT ALICE

PORT ALICE

Is a small village, located at the head of Neroutsos Inlet, near Quatsino Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island near Port McNeill. The community was built in 1918 during construction of a large pulp mill owned by the Whalen Pulp and Paper Company and is considered one of the British Columbia’s instantaneous towns after it replaced a original townsite that was located just to the north. Port Alice is named after Alice Whalen, whose father founded the company that owned and operated the mill. In 2007, the community lost its pulp mill due to the infestation of interior forests from the Mountain Pine Beetle. However, it is not known when or if the town will ever survive again as a town. Ironically, Port Alice bears a town to that of Port Annie, a fictional town in the novel “The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne” by a Vancouver Island author by the name of Jack Hodgins. Port Alice relies on tourism industry as its main economic benefactors and is home many tourist attractions including that of a seawall that hugs the shores of Neroutsos Inlet as well as a scenic and beautiful 9-hole golf course which is located on a side of a mountain with tree-lined fairways and small greens and because of this it poses a challenge to golfers. Dale Walters, a boxer who won a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, was born in Port Alice.

PORT ALICE’S POPULATION: 821