Awake by 6 and ready to head out. Grabbed showers (noticed that it had obviously rained during the night), breakfast, listened to the VHF marine forecast: 70% chance of thunderstorms in the morning, 30% same in the afternoon and evening, winds currently 10 knots, increasing to 15 and small craft warning issued. So made another batch of coffee and settled in for another day.

All day long, under a bright sweltering sunshine, we watched a line of those cumulus nimbus just to the north, moving parallel to the inlet. Somebody got it but not us.

So we settled in for a maintenance day. Went for a mile or so walk up the bay and found a store which we checked out for another time, then back to the boat. For some reason the horseflies and deerflies have decided that they want Phil this year and watching him walk along the road flinging his hat around his head was indeed a sight to see. He hates bug sprays but I think after today he hates bugs worse.

We did a few odd jobs on the boat and chatted with the staff and some of the neighbours.

Maintenance DayI picked up a book on the history of Byng Inlet and Britt and discovered some interesting tidbits.

In 1850, the Robinson-Huron Treaty was signed by Chief Pamequonaisheung and 38 other Ojibwa chiefs. They were given “a tract of land to commence seven miles from the mouth of the River Maganetawang and extending six miles east and west by three miles north as well as certain other payments and gifts.” The Treaty gave them the land north of the river but they actually settled on the south side of the river. Now it took until the 22 of August 1895 (that’s 45 years) before Ottawa figured out where the Reserve actually was. You see, the surveyor got it all wrong and it took all that time to get it sorted out.

Byng Inlet has an extensive timber history, log booms and mills. The first saw mill was built here in 1867. Everything had to be imported by barges from the railhead at Collingwood. The first steamer arrived in 1868. In 1871, 6,765,000 board feet of lumber came out of the two sawmills operating here.

Shipping was another big business here; bringing in supplies and taking out lumber. Rafts of timber were brought from Sault Ste. Marie, Spanish River and Pointe au Baril for processing at the mills. In a gale of 8 August 1888, five ships towing three large booms were lost; upwards of 35,000 logs. There were several other losses from this gale as well and the total estimated loss was $50,000. That means that each of those logs in tow was worth about $1.00 each. Amazing.

The remains of the old piers and coal docks are still here; we saw them in our walk this morning.

Back then, Britt was, of course, a company town, not a village. The company made the rules. Cooks were the most highly paid in the lumber camps, earning $26/month. There was even a premium wage for “remote areas” of $.25 day. So what was more remote than Britt itself?

If you wanted to come to Britt by steamer in 1871, a ticket from Owen Sound cost $2.50 on the deck and $3.00 with a cabin.

Another big industry here was fishing. As an example, from March to June of 1929, 11,154 pounds of fish (probably whitefish) were shipped out of Britt by the CPR.

And of course, the usual mixture of lighthouse keepers, trappers, miners, etc.

In the back of the book (The History of Byng Inlet and Its Shoreline Communities by Fred Holmes), there is an appendix entitled “There are no parking meters in Britt, but there are...” and it proceeds to list all sorts of things, including Insect Repellant, Liquor Store with Cold Beer, Dart Boards, Pickerel, Pike, Musky, Salmon, Bass and “Friendly People and Georgian Bay.”

Back to the present, the wind died down about 9 pm tonight and we await the weather and wave forecasts for tomorrow. We spent quite a bit of time studying the charts both last night and today and have worked out several “duck out” anchorages should we start off and have to hole up somewhere. We may anchor in the Bustard Islands or if the water is calm, head up to Beaverstone Bay and complete the outside route.

There is one further comment here on Byng. The area was named after Admiral John Byng (1704-1757) who “had been a popular war hero but was later court-martialed and executed for ‘neglect of duty in battle’ for having failed to protect the British base at Minorca in the Mediterranean. This was in keeping with the famous phrase from Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ that from time to time the English found it necessary to shoot an admiral, ‘Pour encourager les autres.’ ”

So much for Byng.

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