CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival

Career Highlights: Operator CKFH Toronto 1951; CKGB Timmins, Ontario; Sports Director & play-by-play announcer CKBB Barrie, Ontario; News CFCF Montreal mid-1950s; founder and publisher Regina Weekly Mirror 1960; Program Director MEETA (forerunner of ACCESS Alberta) 1969; News co-anchor CBXT-TV Edmonton 1971-73; Talk show host CJCA Edmonton 1974-79; Fil Fraser Show CITV-TV Edmonton 1974-75; Morning Host CKXM-FM Edmonton 1979-1983; Host, Alberta Morning CKUA September 1, 1983-84; National Task Force on Broadcasting Ottawa 1985-86; Director Development ACCESS Alberta Edmonton 1987; chief commissioner Alberta Human Rights Commission 1989-92; Order of Canada 1991; President Vision-TV Toronto January 1995 – December 2000. Interim Board Chair Telefilm Canada, 2007. Born in Montreal in August 1932.

Fil Fraser

FIL FRASER has been a life-long broadcaster, journalist, television program director and administrator, and a radio, television and feature film producer. Based in Edmonton, Alberta, he is the author of the best selling memoir, Alberta’s Camelot – Culture and the Arts in the Lougheed Years and Running Uphill – the Fast, Short Life of Harry Jerome, a biography of the Canadian Olympic sprinter. The rights to produce a feature documentary based on the biography have been optioned by the National Film Board of Canada.

Fraser is an adjunct professor of Communications Studies at Athabasca University, Canada’s pioneering distance learning institution. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors and Vice-Chair of Telefilm Canada. He was the founding Chair of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation, created under the patronage of the late Lieutenant Governor, Hon. Lois E. Hole. He is a member of the Order of Canada, and was inducted into the Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in October, 2005. In 2008 Fraser was honoured with a D.Litt (Hon) degree by the University of Alberta.

Career Highlights
Fraser began his broadcasting career with Foster Hewitt’s radio station CKFH, Toronto in 1951. He later worked at radio stations in Timmins and in Barrie, Ontario (where he was the play-by-play voice of the Barrie Flyers “Junior A” hockey team). In the mid-fifties he hosted radio programs on CKVL, Verdun and was later a journalist in the CFCF news department in his home town of Montreal, Quebec.
He moved to Regina in 1958, and worked in public relations in both government and private sectors before founding and publishing, in 1960, the Regina Weekly Mirror, which chronicled the introduction of Medicare by the Tommy Douglas Government. In Regina Fraser hosted the “hot stove league” between period commentaries for broadcasts of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League sponsored by the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office as well as hosting a week-end news round-up for CJME. Between 1963 and 1969, Fraser was a writer/editor and health educator in the field of alcoholism and addictions. He was the Director of Education at the Saskatchewan Bureau on Alcoholism, and in 1965, he moved to Edmonton to work in the same capacity with the Division of Alcoholism of the Alberta Department of Health (now AADAC).

In 1969, he joined the Metropolitan Edmonton Educational Television Association (MEETA), forerunner of Alberta’s ACCESS TV NETWORK, as program director of Canada’s first on air educational television station, which became available to Edmonton viewers in March, 1970. He was the “co-anchor” for CBC Edmonton’s supper hour news and public affairs program in 71/72 and 72/73, and the host of ITV Television’s Fil Fraser Show in 1974. During the same period, he formed his own production company and wrote, produced and directed several educational films for television.

In 1976 he produced one of Canada’s most successful feature films, WHY SHOOT THE TEACHER, following with MARIE ANNE in 1977 and THE HOUNDS OF NOTRE DAME in 1980. All were award winners, receiving both theatrical and television release.
In 1974, Fraser organized and chaired the first Alberta Film Festival, now known as the AMPIA Awards, in which his films were later to win several prizes. He chaired the first Commonwealth Games Film Festival in 1978, and, in 1979, was a founder of the Banff International Television Festival.
Between 1989 and 1992, Fraser served a three-year term as Chief Commissioner of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. He was President and Chief Executive Officer of VISION TV from January 1995 to December 2000.

Fil Fraser was born and educated in Montreal, and has been happily married to Gladys Odegard for twenty five years.

Fil Fraser

Public Service
Fraser was a member of the 1977 Alberta Task Force on Film, which recommended the establishment of the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation. In 1985 federal Communications Minister Marcel Masse appointed him as a member of the Federal Task Force on Broadcasting Policy (Caplan/Sauvageau), whose September, 1986 report formed the basis for a new Canadian Broadcasting Act. He was appointed in August 1987, to the Canadian Multiculturalism Council by the then Secretary of State, the Honourable David Crombie, and was Chair of the Council’s media committee. On behalf of the Minister of State for Multiculturalism, the Honourable Gerry Weiner, Fraser organized and chaired a National Forum on Broadcasting and Multiculturalism, “Reflections in the Electronic Mirror”, held in Toronto in May, 1988. In 1990, Fraser was appointed to membership on “The Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, a Federal Royal Commission also known as the “Spicer” Commission.
In 1994, at the request of Mayor of Edmonton, he chaired a Task Force on Access to Information, which provided the basis for a modern access to information by-law for the City of Edmonton.

Writing
Fraser is the author of Alberta’s Camelot: Culture and the Arts in the Lougheed Years, published by Lone Pine Publishing and Running Uphill – the Fast, Short Life of Canadian Champion Harry Jerome, a biography of the Olympic sprinter.He has published numerous articles and stories in newspapers, magazines and journals. He contributed an essay to the book, “Farewell to the 70s”, published by Nelson in 1979, and to a 2005 book, “Alberta – A State of Mind”, published by Key Porter Books in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Province of Alberta. His memoir on Canadian multiculturalism, Black Like Me, appeared in the 100th Anniversary issue of Saturday Night Magazine in January 1987. His columns on human rights, multiculturalism, and a broad variety of other subjects have appeared in the Toronto Star, the Edmonton Journal, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette and a number of other Canadian dailies.

Teaching
Fraser has taught extension courses on subjects ranging from “Great Religions” and “Great Civilizations” to “Man and Chemical Comforts” at the Regina campus of the University of Saskatchewan, and at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In 1992 he developed and, up until the time he took up his duties at Vision TV in 1995, taught a credit course on “The Evolution of Human Rights” for 3rd year students in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. He has developed and teaches a graduate course on Canadian film for Athabasca University, where he is an adjunct professor.

Corporate Boards:

Current
Milestone Radio, Inc., Toronto – Director

Past
Telefilm Canada – Director, Vice Chair
Radio Nord Communications, Inc., Montreal, Director
CBC Newsworld, Ottawa, Director
Videotron West, Edmonton, Director

Not for Profit Boards:

Current
Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation, Director, (founding Chair)
Banff International Television Festival – Honourary Lifetime Director
Canadian Journalism Foundation – Govenor

Past
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra Society, Director
Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation, Toronto – Director
Banff International Films for Television Festival – Founding Chair
Media Awareness Network, Ottawa – Chair
Canadian Speciality and Premium Television Association (SPTV) – Founding Chair
Vision TV Foundation, Toronto – Director
North American Association of Broadcasters – Advisory Board
John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights, Edmonton – Director, Vice Chair
The University of Alberta – Senator
Ontario Heritage Foundation – Director
Empire Club, Toronto – Director
Edmonton International Film Festival – Director
The Banff Centre – Governor
The Alberta Performing Arts Foundation – Director
Alberta Motion Picture Association – Director

Major Juries:
Member Rose D’Or Television Awards – Montreux, Switzerland – 1995
President Golden Stag Music Festival, Brasov, Romania – 1996,
Chair Alberta Motion Picture Industries (AMPIA) Awards – 2001
President Banff International Television Festival – 2002, 2005
Chair Canadian Race Relations Foundation Award of Excellence – 2003

Awards and Honours:
1978 – The Alberta Achievement Award, “in Recognition of Excellence in Film Making”, presented by Premier Peter Lougheed.
1981 – “Inspiration”, an original sculpture by Roy Leadbeater; a special award “Presented to Fil Fraser for his dedication as founder of the Banff Television Festival” by the Banff Television Foundation.
1989 – The Harambee Award presented for public service by the Harambee Foundation of Canada.
1990 – The Dave Billington Award, “For his outstanding contribution to the Alberta Motion Picture Industry”, presented by the Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association (AMPIA)
1991 – Inducted as a member of the Order of Canada by His Excellency, Hon. Ramon Hnatyshyn, Governor General of Canada.
1994 – Proclaimed Honorary Ambassador of the City of Edmonton by Mayor Jan Reimer.
1995 – The John Ware Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by the Black Achievement Award Society of Alberta.
1999 – The Harry Jerome Award, “For Excellence in the Professions”, presented by the Black Business and Professional Association, Toronto.
2001 – “The Fil Fraser Lecture Series”, presented annually by The Canadian Association of Black Journalists. The series was created to focus on the important role that cultural and social diversity can and should play in the Canadian media. Fraser delivered the inaugural lecture on September 16, 2001.
2005 – Inducted into the Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame.
2005 – The Alberta Centennial Medal
2008 – Honorary Degree, D.Litt, University of Alberta.

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Fil Fraser’s website