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March/April 2003 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Creating a park À la carte Mosaic Reverberations

It’s as though the river is singing,” says Bill Miller of the strains of dozens of fiddle players floating down New Brunswick’s Tobique River in canoes. Miller is the co-founder of Fiddles on the Tobique, a three-day jam session in June that draws fiddlers from the Maritimes, other regions of Canada and the United States. They set out near Miller’s hometown of Nictau, a hamlet of 16 souls in the northwestern part of the province, and paddle 10 kilometres downriver to Riley Brook, population 150.

The idea for a music fest on the water emerged in 1994, when Miller met New Brunswick fiddler Ivan Hicks, who had never been in a canoe. Miller, a third-generation canoe builder, invited him for a paddle on the condition that he brought his violin. Enchanted, Hicks returned the following year with another fiddler and a pianist, and a tradition was born. Last year, volunteers counted 671 watercraft on the river, carrying musicians of all notes, from mandolinists to keyboard players. Miller says he dreams of floating an entire orchestra down the Tobique, performing none other than Handel’s Water Music.

Monique Roy-Sole

		A flotilla of canoes and kayaks (TOP) drifts along the final stretch of Fiddles on the Tobique near Riley Brook. But the jamming doesn’t end there; fiddlers will pick up their bows again at an evening dance in the town’s community hall. Musicians band together under the bridge at Riley Brook (ABOVE LEFT) to strike up a tune or two. The event attracts fiddlers of all ages and experience. Kathleen Gorey-McSorley of Fredericton (LEFT) was seven and had been taking fiddling lessons for eight months when she set out on the Tobique for the first time last summer. Samantha Robichaud of Riverview, N.B., (ABOVE) strokes the strings of her purple violin; the 15-year-old member of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra and former Junior Canadian Fiddling Champion has been playing since she was four.