Every summer a small, sleepy rural community morphs into a bustling epicenter of fiddling and fun.

A river is a living thing. It has a soul, a voice, a character, a life. I live on the bank of a river. I hear it talk, moan, sing, giggle and gurgle. Sometimes it seems to harbour a spirit, an aura-or a supernatural something. Seasonal variations make it alternately a trickling brook, a frothy torrent or an ice jam. Its shape may change, but its soul remains intact. It's like my best friend. It's always there.

The Tobique is a river similar to mine. It has a rhythmic pace, quietly meandering through wooded and open lands in the northwest corner of New Brunswick. As it flows, it reminisces about its distant past, and the cachet it enjoyed as the home of the Tobique Salmon Club. The great and the near great once fished for Atlantic salmon here-John Rockefeller, Babe Ruth, LL Bean-spreading the reputation of this gorgeous gravel-bedded stream far and wide.

The salmon are gone now. The great names are gone too; but the good times on the Tobique roll on. Unlike any other, the Tobique is the reel river. Once it was the song of the fishing reel responding to the big one hooked on flies with names like Blue Charm or Thunder and Lightning. Now it's the river rocking to the "Tobique River Reel" or the "Canoe Builder's Jig." It's Fiddles on the Tobique time!

Do you have a special fantasy-one that you hope will come true but in your heart you know it probably won't? I do. It keeps me dreaming; it unleashes my imagination and takes me to another place. Fiddles on the Tobique is one person's fantasy come true. And that fantasy has fed the spirits of many. Here's the story.

Ivan Hicks, New Brunswick fiddler extraordinaire, had a fantasy. He shared it with his friend, celebrated canoe-maker Bill Miller who lives in Nictau, NB (population 16), on the banks of the Tobique. Ivan was approaching his 50th birthday and his fantasy was to float down the Tobique River in a canoe, serenaded by 50 fiddlers. Bill Miller, a man never to shy away from something imaginative, was just the right guy to grab the fantasy and run with it. He had a yard full of canoes and a head full of fiddle tunes. The notion of fiddling down the Tobique took up permanent residence within him.

In 1994 there was one fiddle echoing down the Tobique, one or two more in 1995, then in 1996 Ivan, the birthday boy, was feted with 50 fiddles. Fiddles on the Tobique was born!

Last year, a decade later, close to 400 fiddlers and 14,000 people drifted down the Tobique River in 1,600 vessels. There were costumes, all the old-time fiddle tunes, comradeship and frivolity. There was dancing on the gunwales. There was fun! I'm told that the youngest participant was four months, and the eldest was 96. And I saw all ages in between. License plates from almost every province and several US states were spotted at the various functions. Everybody loves an East Coast party!

Fiddles on the Tobique is quite an undertaking for such a small supporting population. The 75 people in nearby Riley Brook join Nictau's 16 residents. The communities are normally peaceful and pastoral-fine places to live and love and raise families: superb examples of the quality of living we enjoy here on the East Coast. When the three-day Fiddles event happens the whole community pitches in and shares the jobs and the joy. There are fiddle and guitar workshops, jam sessions, a breakfast and supper open to the public, a barbecue, and a whole lot of pick-me-up sessions wherever fiddle aficionados gather.

The lone general store is a central gathering place; the lineup to the cash is so long during the event that patient strangers quickly become friends. Snippets of overheard conversation tell what is happening where and when, and there's a ripple of excitement about the highlight, the river float.

Fiddles on the Tobique is a growing event and it's for everyone-age, gender, physical shape and ability matter not a hoot. You don't have to play a musical instrument, but you do have to enjoy the music. There aren't many rules to joining in the fun of Fiddles. Respect for the environment, pack out your own garbage, have fun without substance abuse-that's about it. Outboard motors are not welcome. Canoes and kayaks with fiddlers enter the river at a point upstream; others a bit down river. My friends and I were in a canoe with a fiddler and we were buddied together with two other canoes, each with a fiddler and one person on the keyboard. Six miles of music and fun in one afternoon!

You don't have to be an expert paddler either. The river is safe; not too wide and not too deep. We saw a few upsets last year, intentional and otherwise, but nothing risky.

I love the Tobique Valley any time of year: it's unbelievably glorious in the autumn. Should you find yourself in Nictau and see a new log home next to a comfortable older home and a few outbuildings in the back, pull up in the yard. The people and the dog are friendly.

The new building is lovingly called the Nictau Centre for Performing Arts, built by the performing artist himself. But a word of caution! He'll probably be close by and you'll be roped into conversation. You'll find yourself in the company of the rarest endangered species in New Brunswick, Bill Miller. Bill is alive in a lot of directions-he's a poet, a storyteller, a master canoe builder, a top-notch photographer, a passionate man (especially about the Tobique), a man of imagination and humour, an outdoors guy… and much more: the kind of guy you want to spend time with.

He's a down home kinda guy who has lived away in many parts of the world. He says he came back because of the river and the people and because the Tobique Valley "is as nice as it gets." I guess we can say that about a lot of places here in the East.

So exercise caution. if you stop, you're hooked. When you leave, you might have a Miller canoe on the roof of your vehicle, and you can't do any better than that!

Get out your Saltscapes calendar and mark the last weekend of June for the Fiddles on the Tobique event. Maybe I'll see you there. The mythical river gods and the people of Riley Brook and Nictau will welcome you like you belong. And who knows, maybe you do!