There is another oddity about Port Alberni. Port Alberni time.
Now, some people talk about Island time or [insert your choice of ethnic group prejudicially considered lazy] time, as a kind of easy going, not too concerned about deadlines attitude. Port Alberni time is not quite like that. It's actually fairly specific.
When I first got here, I was surprised, on many occasions, by the fact that absolutely nobody arrived anywhere, to any event, early. Given that I am the only pedestrian in town, and was uncertain exactly how long it was going to take me to get serious places, I tended to arrive early. And then, of course, had to wait outside locked up buildings, until somebody else showed up.
Sometimes they would show up right on time. (Never, ever, early.) However, in most cases, they arrived late. Initially, I saw this as a version of Island time, in that nobody in Port Alberni considered that they were late, if they were only fifteen minutes late. If you were fifteen minutes late, you were on time. (This, of course, meant that in addition to however early I was, showing up anywhere, I had to wait an additional fifteen minutes.) It was somewhat annoying. But eventually, I learned to allow for it.
But, over time, as I learned more about Port Alberni, I realized that Port Alberni time was not explained simply by Island time. There was a more particular factor involved.
Nobody who lives in Port Alberni feels that it takes any time at all to travel between any two points in Port Alberni. This means that if you leave where you are, at the time you are supposed to be someplace else, you are, technically, according to Port Alberni time, on time.
There is an additional outcome of this perspective. It has to do with Port Alberni drivers. Everybody, assuming this fact about Port Alberni time, that travel time occupies no time at all, sets out to prove that it is true. If they leave some place at the time that they are supposed to be someplace else, they drive as fast as humanly possible. In fact, they drive as close as possible to the speed of light, so that time dilation kicks in, and it does not, in fact, take any time at all to travel between the two points. Regardless of how far apart the two points are. Granted, no two points in Port Alberni are terribly far apart. I consider any place in Port Alberni to be within walking distance. But it does take *some* time to travel, even in the car, from one place to another in Port Alberni. But the Alberni-ites refuse to believe it.
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