Grand Bay-Westfield is a town on the west bank of the Saint John River immediately north of the boundary between Kings County and Saint John County of New Brunswick, Canada. Name The Town's hyphenated name is the product of a series of amalgamations since 1966. The Parish, and later the Village, of Westfield was named in honour of either Westfield, Massachusetts or Westfield, New Jersey by the Loyalists. The name may also simply be in reference to its location in the western corner of Kings County, New Brunswick. While the name Grand Bay (or as it appears on Monckton's 1758 map, Grand Baye) was used for the body of water by the Acadians and Loyalists, the name only became associated with the settlement at the edge of Westfield Parish around 1869. History Wolastoqey Period The Town of Grand Bay-Westfield exists on traditional Wolastoqey land. The river that runs along the Town is known as Wolastoq, along which the Wolastoqiyik, the people of the beautiful and bountiful river, have lived since time immemorial. The history of Indigenous lands in New Brunswick, and so too Grand Bay-Westfield, is complicated by the fact that no land treaties were concluded between the Indigenous peoples and the Crown. As one of the Wabanaki people, the Wolastoqiyik were recognized in a series of Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown which established an ongoing relationship of peace, friendship, and mutual respect between nations, but no land agreements were made wither before the province of New Brunswick was formed in 1784 or afterwards. Though no Wolastoqey name for the area now incorporated as Grand Bay-Westfield is known, W. F. Ganong recorded the original name for the Grand Bay as Pekweetaypaykek. The Nerepis river - formerly Nelepitchk but now written as Nali'pits in Wolastoqey - which runs through the north of the Town was also frequently used as part of a portage route travelling to the Musquash watershed. As Joseph Robineau de Villebon noted in a letter dated October 22, 1696, there was a fortified Wolastoqey settlement and fort at the confluence of the Nerepis and Wolastoq rivers just outside the Town of Grand Bay-Westfield at Woodman's Point. This settlement was one of many stockaded outposts erected by the Wolastoqiyik; presumably for defense against the Iroquois. While the fortified settlement fell into disuse during the 18th century, many Wolastoqiyik continued to summer near the mouth of the