One of my first very early memories of Deadwater Creek is being in the barnyard at the house where Paul Hamilton and his mother used to live and watching birds.Bluejays,as I recall,sitting on a fencepost.Paul Hamilton had sheep on his farm and big piles of stones in the pasture.Because he chopped trees and drove them to the mill,I always thought of hiom as Paul Bunyon.He seemed like a very large,strong man,though years later,when I last saw him he hardly seemed bigger than average.His mother,whose name I can never remember was a small frail looking old woman with a bit of a hunched back.She reminded me of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons,perhaps because my first memory of her was watching the bluejays.I was very young then and I'm thinking that my parents and grandparents must have been attending a wedding or a funeral at the time.It was very unusual for me to have been left alone with the Hamiltons.

Across the field from the Hamiltons was the Smith farm.My grandmother was a Smith.As long as I can recall the Smith farm was abandoned.Some of the Smiths lived in Ontario,some in Fredricton and some in Portland,Maine where they operated a restaurant called Smith Farm.We would always go pick strawberries on the Smith land and once I was stung by a bee there.You needed to watch for old wells when walking around there too.

All the farms near my grandfathers were abandoned by the mid sixties.Uncle Clifford had moved to Fredricton and worked for the University Of New Brunswick.Fred and Anna English had moved into the town of Canterbury and I can never recall visiting them in Dead Creek.Anna English had tuberculosis and we would visit her at the sanatorium near Moncton for a while.I can recall visiting my uncle Ernies place across the road from my grandparents farm.Ernie Derrick was married to my mothers sister Ruby,and they moved into Canterbury too around this time where they operated a store and gas station at the top of the hill going out of town toward Skiff Lake.They had a bunch of children,most of whom moved to Ontario for a while.Their youngest was my cousin Carolyn,maybe five years older than me.The only reason that I can ever remember visiting the Derricks at the farm is that I remember Carolyn had a toy dump truck,an orange one that she used to play with and allowed me to play with too.Carolyn was very much like her farher,one of the kindest and gentlest souls I've ever met.

In later years we would pick apples on the Derrick farm.Apples were plentiful there but were often wormy and covered with warts.

Often we would drive out to Skiff Lake and come back through Upper Skiff Lake,past Mud Lake which was overgrown and said to be full of suckers and eels.When my grandmother lived on the farm,she would eat eels and they must have got them from Mud Lake.Occasionally she would speak fondly of eating eels,and I thought her a crazy old woman when she did.There wasn't much reason to go back to Canterbury via the old road as there were very few people living there.The only people I can recall visiting were the Wylies who lived on my grandfathers old farm.Pauline Wylie was a short but emense woman and people said she was so big because there was something wrong with her glands.Once we got a kitten from the Wylies and it hads a conniption in the car when we tried to take it home.It took to running laps across the cars dashboard and around the doors and back window deck.While we were away to swimming lessons in Moncton,that cat was struck and killed by a car.

The reason I'm writing all this about Dead Creek is that it is an ancient part of me,even though I didn't live there.The Smiths,Grahams,Englishes and Derricks were all my mothers people and so I am who I am because of the people who lived in and did the things they did in Dead Creek.Someday I hope to research more of the regions history,so that I might know myself better.The fire,in particular fascinates me.

Dead Creek brought forth my mother.She lived there,went to school and church there and in Canterbury and moved away like most of the others.She was a very bright girl by all accounts and ended up working for a number of people as a secretary,including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and The Canadian Imperial Bank Of Commerce.She was dedicated to her family until she went to be with the Lord in 2006.She rests now,just a few miles from Dead Creek,in the cemetary at Canterbury,with her parents,brother and Husband.

Dead creek is a mystery to me.There is so much to know that I don't know now.Maybe someday I will be able to write more about it,when I know more.But,whatever,I am deeply connected to that place.