Fil Fraser
Over a career spanning more than half a century, FIL FRASER has made his mark in filmmaking, radio, television, as a writer, and as a human rights activist. His literary achievements to date include the best-selling memoir Alberta’s Camelot: Culture and the Arts in the Lougheed Years and the biography Running Uphill: the Fast, Short Life of Harry Jerome. Running Uphill is soon to be a feature documentary film produced by the National Film Board. His newest book is How the Blacks Created Canada, a history of the black experience in Canada. He's also currently at work on a biography of Toronto radio mogul Denham Jolly and a novel built around Black immigration to British Columbia in the 1850s. Fraser currently teaches a graduate course on film policy at Athabasca University, Canada's pioneering distance learning institution. He is a former chairman of Telefilm Canada and was the former CEO of Vision TV. He also is a former Chief Commissioner of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Fraser was born and educated in Montreal. He started his career as a radio announcer in 1951 with Foster Hewitt's radio station CKFH in Toronto. Fraser migrated out west in 1958 and continued as a radio announcer, eventually becoming program manager and senior producer of MEETA, Alberta, Canada’s first on-air educational television station. The organization later became ACCESS-TV. Fraser also hosted and produced a weekly public affairs program on ITV (Global) in Edmonton entitled Newsmakers. In 1974, Fraser organized the first Alberta Film Festival which became the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association Awards. In 1979, he founded the Banff International Television Festival, of which he is a lifetime Honorary Director. During these years, Fraser was among the pioneers in building a western Canadian film industry, releasing such award-winning feature films as Why Shoot the Teacher (1976), Marie Anne (1977) and The Hounds of Notre Dame (1980). Fraser also contributed to the industry by serving on a variety of boards and commissions. He was a member of the Alberta Task Force on Film and later the Federal Task Force on Broadcasting Policy (Caplan/Savageau). He was the Governor of the Canadian Journalism Foundation and a founding member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema. As an activist, Fraser served as Chief Commissioner for the Alberta Human Rights Commission from 1989 to 1992. He was a member of the so-called Spicer Commission, the Citizen’s Forum on Canada’s Future. Fraser also became a member of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists and the Canadian Multiculturalism Council. Fraser was granted an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University or Alberta in 2007. For his long years of public service and accomplishment, Fraser has been awarded the Alberta Achievement Award and the Order of Canada.