Wakefield Parish, New Brunswick

Wakefield is a geographic parish in Carleton County, New Brunswick, Canada, located north on the west bank of the Saint John River north of Woodstock.

Prior to the 2023 governance reform, for governance purposes it was comprised two local service districts and part of a third, all of which were members of the Western Valley Regional Service Commission (WVRSC).

The Census subdivision of Wakefield Parish shares the geographic parish's borders.

Origin of name

The parish may have been named for the city of Wakefield in Yorkshire, England.

Historian William Francis Ganong noted that the name predated the parish's erection, appearing in 1801 in the Land Memorials.

History

Wakefield was erected in 1803 within York County from unassigned lands north of Woodstock and Northampton Parishes. It included Simonds and Wilmot Parishes, along with parts of Bright, Brighton, Northampton, Peel, Richmond, Southampton, Wicklow, and Woodstock Parishes as well as part of Maine claimed by New Brunswick.

Boundaries

Wakefield Parish is bounded:

on the north by the southern line of a land grant at the mouth of the Little Presque Isle Stream and its prolongation to the international border;

on the east by the Saint John River;

on the south by the southern line of a land grant on the Saint John River, opposite the junction of Route 105 and Newburg Road, prolonged to the Meduxnekeag River, and then the river to the international border;

and on the west by Maine.

It also includes all islands in front of it in the Saint John River. Whether the southern boundary extends through Pine Island or around it is not made clear by either the Territorial Division Act or the New Brunswick cadastral grant map of the area.