Third-generation, wooden-canoe builder, Bill Miller, plies his craft the same way his grandfather did 81 years ago. He started building canoes with his grandfather when he was a teenager, says Miller, who builds 10 canoes a year, shipping many to buyers throughout the world.
Lengths of Eastern White Cedar are first fashioned into ribs and planking. Narrow cedar strips are steamed until pliable, then bent over what's called a jig, form or mold. Three of the eight jigs in Miller’s cache were built by well-known guide and outfitter, Bert Moore, who closed up shop in 1947. "Four jigs were made by my grandfather," says Miller "and one I made myself." Brass canoe tacks fasten the planking to the ribs. The hull is removed from the jig, sanded to perfection and covered with either canvas or fiberglass.
The Chestnut Ogilvy canoe, a wood-canvas canoe built at the world-renowned, former Chestnut Canoe Company, has a unique connection to the Miller family. "In 1928 Harry Chestnut was fishing the Tobique River with famous hunting and fishing guide, Jock Ogilvy," says Miller. Chestnut saw Jock sitting up with a pipe in his left hand and he was poling with the right. "Where did you ever learn to pole a canoe with one hand?" Chestnut asked. "This is the best poling canoe in the world," says Ogilvy. Vic Miller 'hued it out with an axe,' he said. They were in a Miller canoe built by Miller's grandfather, William Victor Miller. Ogilvy brought the canoe to Fredericton later that year where they took the pattern off the watercraft and built what today is known as the Chestnut Ogilvy.
Bill Miller loves storytelling. He enjoys telling tales of the Tobique, reciting poems and spinning yarns. "I've always loved poetry" says Miller. "I write a poem almost every day. One of my favorites is Son of a Beech. It's a poem about the day that I struggled to chop a particularly stubborn piece of knotted beech wood."
Being raised on old-time music, listening to Don Messer's Jubilee and other great musicians of the era, he seizes every opportunity to listen to fiddle music. On a whim he offered to take one of New Brunswick's most well-known fiddlers, Ivan Hicks, for his first canoe ride. “I'll take you for a canoe ride," he said "providing you bring along your fiddle." When the sweet sounds of fiddle music, cradled in the fertile, green forest echoed through the valleys, they agreed this was too good to keep to themselves. That’s how the celebrated event, Fiddles on the Tobique, came to life. "What started with one fiddler player went to 50 in three years," Miller says. "Now we have over 250 musicians, 357 canoes and over 10,000 people right here in Nictau, which has a population of 20. Unbelievable!"
"I was born and raised on the Tobique," says Miller. "My heart, my soul and my very being is on the Tobique. I've traveled to 25 foreign countries and four continents around this world. The Tobique River Valley between Perth Andover and Mount Carleton Park is the prettiest section of country there is."
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