Port Alice
Port Alice is a village of approximately 664 (2016 census) located on Neroutsos Inlet, southwest of Port McNeill, on Vancouver Island, originally built by Whalen Pulp and Paper Mills of Vancouver. The community is known for its natural environment, pulp mill, and salt water fishing. History. It was named after Alice Whalen, the founders' mother. The brothers Whalen began their construction of the mill at its present site in 1917, with first pulp produced in 1918. The mill at Swanson Bay, on the Inside Passage farther north, was also a Whalen operation. Port Alice bears a resemblance to  Port Annie, the fictional town described by Vancouver Island author Jack Hodgins in his novel "The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne". The new orchid hybrid "Port Alice" has been officially listed at London England in the Royal Horticultural Society's "Book of Registered Orchid Hybrids". This slipper-type flower is the result of crossing a complex hybrid Paphiopedilum "Western Sky" with a species "Paphiopedilum appletonianum". Geography. Devil’s Bath, a flooded sinkhole near Port Alice, is an example of a cenote and is the largest in Canada at 359 meters in diameter and 44 meters in depth. There are a number  of hiking destinations in the area. They include Devil’s Bath, Eternal Fountain, Vanishing River & Reappearing River. These are a series of ancient karst and limestone formations. The access is through dirt roads. Climate. Port Alice has an oceanic climate (Köppen "Cfb") and is one of the mildest and wettest places in Canada, receiving of actual rainfall per year and exceptionally little snow, which amounts to as much as 33 percent more rainfall than infamously wet Prince Rupert and only marginally less than Southeast Alaska’s wettest cities of Ketchikan and Yakutat which each average around and receive much more  snowfall. Demographics. In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Port Alice had a population of 739 living in 415 of its 538 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 664. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.