Britt, Ontario
dispersed rural community in Ontario, Canada

Britt is a community in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the unincorporated township of Wallbridge in the Parry Sound District.
The community is located on the north shore of the Magnetawan River at Byng Inlet, approximately five kilometres west of Highway 69, at the end of Highway 526.
Like its neighbouring community of Byng Inlet on the south shore, Britt was originally a sawmill village, known as Byng Inlet North when the Burton Mill located there in 1880. As the lumber industry in this area had reached its peak, prior to the building of the CPR between 1903 and 1908, the community on the north shore was established as a port for receiving coal, required for the railway's steam locomotives. It was after this, that Byng Inlet North was renamed Britt for Thomas Britt, the CPR Superintendent of Fuels.
The community is not an incorporated municipality, but part of the Unorganized Centre Parry Sound District and is administered by a local services board.
The village is name-checked in Stompin’ Tom Connors’s song, “Around the Bay and Back Again,” from his 1969 album On Tragedy Trail with Stompin’ Tom Connors.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Britt had a population of 289 living in 163 of its 307 total private dwellings, a change of −1.4% from its 2016 population of 293. With a land area of 37.56 km2 (14.50 sq mi), it had a population density of 7.7/km2 (19.9/sq mi) in 2021.
“Britt, Ontario” enters the record as dispersed rural community in Ontario, Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Britt, Ontario and dispersed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Britt, Ontario” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Britt, Ontario and dispersed provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4971526. Authority coordinates are 45.773, -80.556. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880, 1903, 1908 and 1969.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Britt, Ontario”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Britt, Ontario primary sources, Britt, Ontario archive and Britt research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Britt, Ontario”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Britt, Ontario” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.