Byng Inlet, Ontario

Byng Inlet is a ghost town in Parry Sound District, Ontario. For a period in the nineteenth century it was home to one of the largest sawmill operations in Canada. The name of the town came from that of the English Admiral John Byng. It is also the name of the body of water, on which the village is situated, on the south shore of the Byng Inlet a widening of the Magnetawan River, near its mouth on Georgian Bay.

First established as a mill town in 1869, there have been a number mills at Byng Inlet. At first, growth of the village was sporadic, operations of the mills fluctuating with the changes in the tariffs on lumber exported to the United States, (the market for the output of Georgian Bay mills). Even the panic of 1873 with widespread affects, threatened the lumber industry at Byng Inlet. It would not be until the 1890s that mill workers established their roots, and Byng Inlet became their permanent home.

In 1897 the Holland and Emery Lumber Company of East Tawas, Michigan, relocated their mill from Saginaw Bay, to Byng Inlet. Having acquired the Magnetawan timber berths from Merrill and Ring, (another Michigan lumber firm). Nelson Holland and Temple Emery also acquired the Page mill, from Merrill and Ring in 1899, however, owing to financial difficulty of Mr. Emery, this was subsequently sold and removed.

A new partnership was started with Nelson Holland and L P Graves, along with James Thissel Emery and others. Luther Pomeroy Graves, had been a longtime accociate of Nelson Holland, being the head of the firm Graves, Manbert and George, at Black Rock, NY, which marketed Holland and Emery's lumber, forwarding it through the Erie Canal. Temple Emery's nephew, James Thissel Emery, a millwright also a longtime associate of Mr. Holland, had apprenticed at Henry W. Sage's mill in Bay City and at Holland's mill, previously located in East Saginaw.

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