Britt Ontario - Britt clings to the shores of Byng Inlet, seeking comfort in the waters that for most of the community's history was its lifeblood.
 
Sadly, these waters aren't providing the prosperity they once did and Britt is today a shrunken community, home to just 350 proud souls.
 
The place exudes a ghostly silence that bespeaks a glory that it will never again see.
 
"There are ghosts of interesting bygone days here. It's a small community with a big story to tell," says Steve Wohleber, a longtime resident who is passionate about Britt's heritage and has quite probably the finest collection of photos related to the community's past anywhere.
 
Wohleber laughs as he ponders the juxtaposition between the bustling village of yesteryear and the sedate one in which he has happily raised his kids.
 
"Britt wasn't always sleepy," he says simply, his voice trailing off.
 
He's right.
 
Sleepy though it is today, Britt was once no stranger to massive freighters and tankers, vessels that would have been equally at home sailing the oceans of the world.
 
For a while, thanks to the waters of Byng Inlet, Britt was actually a big deal.
 
The village's beginning was inauspicious.
 
During the summer of 1870, surveyor Vernon B. Wadsworth was dispatched by the Dodge Lumber Company to find a location on Georgian Bay at which to build a sawmill to serve their newly acquired Magnetewan River timber limits.
 
Wadsworth ultimately selected a spot at the mouth of Byng Inlet on the south shore, where the mill would be easily accessible to steamers off Georgian Bay and yet still in a sheltered cove where logs could be collected after being driven down from the interior highlands.
 
At the instruction of his employers, he also laid out a village site adjacent to this third mill, naming it Byng Inlet after the body of water upon which it was located.
 
Little could he have known that this would become one of Canada's largest sawmill towns when, under the later ownership of Holland Bigwood and Company, the mill employed hundreds of men and turned out 200,000 board feet daily in two 10 hour shifts.
 
On the opposite side of the inlet, across from this bustling town with its smoke-spewing mills and frenzied wharves, arose Britt, a smaller, less industrial community that never really grabbed the headlines in the way Byng Inlet did.
 
Indeed, the village was so over-shadowed by its neighbour that it was originally known simply as Byng Inlet North.
 
Byng Inlet North had its origins as a sawmill town as well.
 
In 1866, a man named Gibson built a sawmill on Old Man Island and his workers erected homes on the mainland north of the island.
 
"Town" was initially something of a misnomer, in 1870 the community comprised only a few cabins along a single street.
 
By 1875 the population was sizable enough to warrant the construction of a schoolhouse (S.S. Number 2 Wallbridge), though in the end, the school would have a remarkably short history.
 
In 1883, S.S. Number 2 was closed after the teacher, Miss Armstrong, drowned when she fell through a hole in the ice while skating home to Byng Inlet.
 
After this, ferries transported students across the Magnetewan River to a school in Byng Inlet.
 
The closing of the school was a blow but Byng Inlet North rebounded nicely when a group of Canadian investors (Midland-based George Samuel and Joseph Chew and Barrie-based James and Martin Burton) opened a larger sawmill in the village on the current site of Little Britt Inn in 1884.
 
The population swelled again as workers' cottages grew up in the mill's shadow.
 
Both the mill and its employees thrived, and villagers celebrated when a post office was opened on 10 Jun 1885.
 
This period of prosperity was relatively short-lived, however, as fire destroyed this mill on 20 Apr 1893.
 
It was never rebuilt, throwing the livelihood of its workers into question.
 
Many moved away, but others found employment across the inlet at the mills there, commuting across the river each morning and evening.
 
As the population dwindled away, the post office closed.
 
For decades, Britt and Byng Inlet remained isolated from civilization.
 
The only practical link to the outside world was by steamer, while such roads that existed to-and-from town were little more than foot tracks impassible by wagon.
 
During winter months, the frozen waters of Georgian Bay provided a more direct and less taxing alternative to the roads, and many people took advantage of it to visit Parry Sound.
 
But it was a risky venture.
 
More than one person perished when the cutter they rode in fell through the ice.
 
From mid-November to mid-May, no steamship could make it through to Parry Sound, let alone Britt, meaning populations were essentially cut-off from the outside world for half the year, their communities were like frozen prisons.

This state of isolation ended when the Parry-Sound-Sudbury branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) passed nearby in 1908.
 
The station was several miles inland, but for the first time an all-weather and affordable link to the outside world was available.
 
It was common for residents to ride into Parry Sound on the morning train to do some shopping, and then return home on the evening train.
 
There's little doubt the railway had a major impact on both Britt and Byng Inlet.
 
The arrival of the CPR had a particularly profound impact on Byng Inlet North.
 
Steam locomotives consumed coal, and lots of it.
 
The CPR recognized they needed a port to supply its northern trains with the fuel they needed, and saw in the deep-waters of Byng Inlet the ideal location.
 
In 1911, the railway built a coal dock and storage facility on the north shore of the inlet near the Still River, giving the moribund community, now officially known as Dunlop, after the resident engineer, a welcomed economic shot in the arm.
 
The name Dunlop didn't stick.
 
In 1927 the residents applied for a post office, but it was discovered there was an existing Dunlop.
 
The community was therefore renamed yet again,
 
this time to Britt after Thomas Britt, superintendent of the CPR's fuel depot in Montreal.
 
It was only right that the CPR named the community after an employee, as Britt was, essentially, a company town kept afloat by the patronage and largesse of the railway company.
 
Even as the mill across the river in Byng Inlet burned to the ground and the logging era that sustained that community came to a sudden end, casting a deathly pall over Byng Inlet, Britt continued to thrive.
 
For the first time in its history, Britt's star eclipsed that of its twin community.
 
The CPR continued to invest heavily in Britt over the ensuing decades.
 
When its engines made the transition from coal to oil in the mid-1950s, the CPR upgraded the docks and built a tank farm to store the fuel.
 
On average, three oil tankers per year inched their way up the Inlet to pull up alongside the docks and disgorge its precious cargo.
 
Nevertheless, the transition from coal to oil had a distinct impact on Britt.
 
The coaling operation was manpower intensive, but oil was far easier to unload, simply connect hoses and watch it pump out.
 
As a result, many of the workers moved on, causing the population of Britt to be halved virtually overnight.
 
Another blow was struck once the Trans-Canada pipeline reached Sarnia, allowing Alberta oil to be pumped directly to Ontario.
 
Britt was now completely obsolete to the CPR.
 
The tank farms and pipelines were dismantled, pulling out the final pillar supporting Britt's economic health.
 
More families moved away.
 
Those residents that remained in Britt after the CPR pulled up stakes continued what was, by the turn of the 20th century, a quiet existence.
 
Count Wohleber among those that have endured.
 
Wohleber watched this final stage in Britt's demise slowly unfold over a number of years.
 
Though born in Pittsburgh, Britt was always a part of his life growing up thanks to vacations spent at his grandparents' cottage, which they purchased in the 1920s.
 
Wohleber fell in love with the special scenery of the Georgian Bay shore and the unique character of Britt.
 
In 1972, he bought the cottage and moved to Britt with his young wife.
 
"I've always been interested in history. Something really struck me when I moved here were the people. The older residents, those in their 70s and 80s, were the first settlers or children of the first settlers, and therefore had firsthand experience of Britt's earliest days. The stories they told enthralled me," Wohleber recalls.
 
Sadly, time has taken these elders and with them went many of their precious stories.
 
Time has also claimed most of the village's oldest buildings.
 
Many were torn down and used for firewood, and others were simply allowed to return to the earth as residents moved away in search of greener pastures.
 
While most are gone, Wohleber notes that if you look hard enough you can still find some relics of the past.
 
"There are a few log buildings remaining from the early days, the original church and hotel still stand, and there are a handful of old stores and homes found on the first street back from the water," he says.

And then there's the railway station, which Wohleber was responsible for saving.
 
When Britt began to wither, the CPR decided to close the station.
 
It sat idle, silent, and weathering, for a number of years before the CPR decided to demolish it.
 
Wohleber couldn't let another historic building disappear from his community.
 
He sprang into action.
 
The story still makes Wohleber laugh.
 
"I put in a tender, but I had no intention of ripping it down. I wanted to save it by moving it to a new location. When I won the tender and the CPR learned of my plans they weren't too happy. My crew and I had to move it across he tracks (they couldn't go the other direction because the river was at its back). This is a main line with 20 or more trains a day passing by. We had to schedule the move for Thanksgiving weekend when there would be only five trains through. CPR officials were pretty nervous but we got it across without incident."
 
The fact that the station is used only as a storage shed, today, doesn't diminish Wohleber's pride in what he accomplished in preserving the building.
 
That this link to the past remains at all is owed entirety to his perseverance.
 
It was a sign of defiance against forces outside of his control that were undermining the future of the community he loved.
 
He was shaking his fist at fate, knowing full well that Britt would never again relive its glories of yesteryear.
 
The only remnant of this once proud heritage lies in the massive pier where coal freighters and oil tankers once docked.
 
It juts into Byng Inlet like a concrete arm reaching out desperately to a wider world that no longer extends a hand in return.
 
But if you stand on the pier and listen carefully, amidst the lapping of the water, and the cry of gulls, you can almost hear whispers of Britt's history.
 
Andrew Hind.