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Nov. 1, 2013

Longtime community friend

John Fraser supports several causes, including Camp Miriam.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY

The first time John Fraser’s name appeared in the Jewish Independent/Jewish Western Bulletin was in 1961. The former member of Parliament for Vancouver South was participating in a political forum organized by the Young Adults of the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre. Since then, he has appeared within these pages close to 170 times, offering the Jewish community holiday greetings, voicing his support of Israel, being honored for his activities to help Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union, speaking at the Jewish National Fund Negev Dinner (honored in 1979, keynote speaker in 2003). And, as he approaches 30 years of being on the finance committee of Camp Miriam, he shared with the Independent some stories about his life, and what led him to become such a friend of the community, and so involved with the camp in particular.

When Fraser’s father returned to British Columbia after the First World War, he worked a few different jobs before “he got involved with a guy named H.R. MacMillan, who sent him to Japan to sell B.C. lumber,” explained Fraser. His mother, who was born and raised in Ontario, fell in love with a decorated soldier who survived his war injuries, but died in the flu epidemic after his return. His mother didn’t become involved with anyone else until she went on a trip in 1929/1930 with a female cousin. “In Japan, she looked up an old friend of hers who was working in what later became the Canadian embassy in Japan, in Tokyo, and that lady introduced her to my father ... and that’s when they met, and they married.”

Though the couple returned to Canada for the wedding, they went back to Japan, where Fraser was born, in December 1931. His parents moved to Canada when Fraser was three, “and my father went into business on his own in the middle of the Depression, which wasn’t a very good idea.”

Fraser grew up in Vancouver, with the exception of a few years in Powell River, when his father had a job there. During the Second World War, his father worked in an agency set up to coordinate timber productivity for the war effort; after the war, he went back into business for himself.

Fraser went to the University of British Columbia, graduating from law school in 1954. “I had a natural interest in history and politics and that sort of thing, and I was a good student in English.... But I didn’t have any affinity at all for arithmetic or mathematics. Now, I always passed ... but I knew I wasn’t going to try and be a research physicist or anything.” He shared the story of how, in Grade 12, he was taking physics and chemistry, passing the former but failing the latter. At the winter break, Fraser went to the principal, “and I said I want to drop physics and I’m going to continue in chemistry. He said, ‘But you’ve done quite well in physics.’ And I said, ‘Yes, but I can’t live with the fact that I failed chemistry, so I’m going to stick with it and pass it.’” Which he did.

From ages 14 to 17, Fraser worked in sawmills, logging camps or survey crews and, then was in the army – he was trained for the Korean War and was posted in 1953 to Germany – returning to complete law school the next year. “And the thought of articling in a law office downtown in Vancouver after all of the interesting and challenging things I’d been doing was anathema to me.” Instead, he went to work with a friend on a geological survey for nearly five months before settling into articling in Vancouver; he finished with a firm in Victoria, with the promise of a position afterward. However, said Fraser, “I was in a good law firm ... but you had the feeling there that you could tell exactly what you were going to be doing a year from now, and five years from now, and that didn’t fit with my adventurous nature. And so I left and I went up to Powell River to run an office for a Vancouver firm, and I stayed there for several years.”

In addition to running a private practice, Fraser was the municipal solicitor and also the Crown prosecutor. “I learned a lot, I had to learn it,” he said.

The Vancouver firm eventually brought Fraser back to the city. After a few years, he “got called from Ladner Downs, and they wanted someone to do solely council work, which is what I’d been hoping to do. By then, I was married and it was a great opportunity and I stayed with them for 10 years, became a partner and then I got elected in 1972, and it was 21 years in the House of Commons.”

Fraser held various ministerial positions during his time in government, and he was Speaker of the House for many years. He was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1995, and received the Vimy Award, which recognizes Canadians who have “made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defence and security of our nation and the preservation of our democratic values,” in 2002. He also has been honored by the Jewish community on more than one occasion, including by the JNF and by Canadian Jewish Congress. He still has the certificate from CJC Pacific Region that he received for his “extraordinary efforts and commitment to the cause of Soviet Jewry and human rights.”

Fraser has been married to his wife, Catherine, for 53 years, and they have “three magnificent daughters and seven granddaughters.” In addition to his career pursuits, Fraser played first division rugby until he was 35, having also played football and soccer in high school; and he and his wife are both longtime skiers. Unfortunately, the couple hasn’t been on mountain lately, as his wife recently underwent a hip replacement.

When asked whether he’s always been interested in politics, Fraser said that although he was mischievous and aggressive when he was young, he always had a lot of friends; he likes people. “By the time I was in Grade 7,” he recalled, “the teachers were putting me up in front of a thousand kids in the auditorium, this was at Point Grey Junior High School. I used to have to make speeches, introduce visitors and this sort of thing. At first, I didn’t like this, but after awhile I got to realize that I was getting an opportunity a lot of kids never would get at that age. And one thing led to another, and so I started to get elected to things in high school. By Grade 12, I got talked into going into an oratorical contest and I won it. And I was involved in student elections from then on. By the time it was my third year of university, I joined the Conservative party because I got talked into going to a mock Parliament and I sat with the Conservatives. Interestingly enough, the issue was whether or not we should have an armed brigade in Europe and, of course, I took the position we should have and then ... a couple of years later, I was serving in it.”

Fraser’s “ambition was to become a good enough courtroom lawyer so that even the Liberals, who I assumed would always be in power, would have to appoint me to the bench.” When he shared his objectives of working for a top law firm and going into public life with his father, who was “sort of a Liberal,” said Fraser, his father offered his support, “as long as what you’re doing is honorable,” but pointed out that Fraser had “picked the most difficult route to get either of those objectives.”

Growing up on Quilchena Crescent, Fraser was close friends – and still keeps in touch – with Larry Estrin. “He lived about three doors away from me, and he and I were born on exactly the same day, we’re the same age,” explained Fraser. At Prince of Wales High School, there were several Jewish students, “I knew them and I spent time with them,” said Fraser. “I grew up with Jewish kids.... Lots of non-Jewish kids knew Jewish kids, but they didn’t grow up with them, they weren’t in and out of their homes.” He clarified, “It was two very disparate groups of people. Now, that doesn’t mean that there was active hostility or active resentment or nastiness or anything, it’s just that that’s the way it was. And, in addition to that, while my wife says that the antisemitism in Vancouver was never what it was like in Montreal – she did her nursing there – it was certainly in existence, and I started to notice it. I probably started to notice it especially after I was spending as much time as I was in doing all kinds of things with Larry and with other Jewish kids.... I didn’t have any illusions about the number of ways in which a Jewish kid growing up in Vancouver in the forties would know perfectly well that he or she was Jewish and there were things that he or she was not really going to be able to join in. For instance, no Jew could join the Quilchena Golf Club, there were no Jews in the Vancouver Club, there were anti-Jewish caveats on properties, in other words, you couldn’t sell to a Jew, and there was quite open, if not malicious, antisemitism.”

By the time he was 12 or 13, Fraser said he was well aware of antisemitism, more so than others perhaps because he was born in Japan. When the Japanese were interned here during the war, he explained, “My father, of course, said this is absolutely wrong.... This is what I was hearing. So, I grew up very conscious of what prejudice is.” Even without the war, he added, “there was plenty of prejudice against Chinese and Japanese” and, after the war Canada was sending Japanese who had been born here “back” to Japan. “I was influenced by all this,” said Fraser.

Later in his conversation with the Independent, Fraser gave other examples of how he has acted upon his beliefs, noting, for example, how he wouldn’t join a fraternity because he couldn’t, given his “strong Christian beliefs, believe in joining a fraternity that refuses to accept people who aren’t white Christians. I just won’t go along with it on a university campus or anywhere else.” He said he refused to join the Vancouver Club for the same reason.

Both of his parents were Christian and he was raised at St. Mary’s Anglican Church. “I don’t remember ever any critical tirades or even commentary against Roman Catholics or Jews or Chinese or Japanese or anybody,” said Fraser, praising the church’s priest at the time, Dudley Kemp. In addition, said Fraser, he was taught right from wrong. “If I had told my mother when I did something wrong, or my father, that, well, it’s all relative, I’d have gone to the woodshed,” he half-joked. “So, when you ask me, well, how I did I get involved in all of this, I really think I’m being accurate in going back into my early days growing up and the influence of my parents. And Larry and I were great pals and we did a lot of things together, and, of course, we talked about everything.”

Sharing a story of his parents’ kindness to Estrin’s family, Fraser summed it up, “All these things, they form you and you emulate to some degree – hopefully, the best degree – the better characteristics of your mother and father.” He linked this concept to his belief in the creation of a Jewish state in Middle East, though he admitted to being angry about the terrorist acts, such as the hanging of a British soldier and the bombing of the King David Hotel, that preceded Israel’s formation. Given all that the Jewish people had gone through, “It was not only right, but it was time for the United Nations to form an Israeli state, so I was for it right from the start.”

Fraser’s involvement with the local Jewish community grew from there, he said. About Camp Miriam specifically, he explained that he was aware of its existence when Bernie Simpson called him after Judge Angelo Branca – who had been chair of a mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) committee helping raise money for Camp Miriam since the late 1960s – died in 1984. Simpson had already been involved for years and related to Fraser that he had been to visit Branca just before he passed away. In that encounter, Simpson asked Branca for suggestions as to who could take over as chair of the finance committee, and Branca said, “See if you can get John Fraser. And, to me, that was a great compliment, coming from Branca.”

Fraser is still very much involved. In addition to his committee work, he’s been visiting the camp every summer for the last several years. He tries to mingle with all of the campers, as well as meet with the older kids for a more in-depth talk, in which he shares with them his reasons for being involved with the camp, his experiences growing up and his trips and continuing commitment to Israel. Among other things, he said, he advises the campers, “Don’t take anything for granted. You can’t assume everything’s going to be alright.” Sharing a story about an exchange with his father, Fraser said he encourages the campers to be skeptics, to be critical of what is going on around them and to be active in the world, but to try and not become cynical, to not give up.

Looking to the future, Fraser told the Independent, “Well, this probably isn’t the time to go into all the bookkeeping, except to say this: we’re not in debt. But we’re having a more and more difficult time raising sufficient funds to not only keep the camp going but also to do what we’ve had to do the last couple of years: rebuild, and build some new things on the campgrounds. Now, why are we concerned about the financial future? Well, the reason is that, when Judge Angelo Branca took over ... the camp was very run down, there was even danger of it closing, and he was able to put together a number of people who put up enough money to tidy the place up and get it going again, and to save it. And some of those people, for many years, were very significant donors, and I won’t get into names now because the minute you say some names, you’ve left somebody out. But what we’re faced with now is that we’ve got fewer of those people because some of them have passed on and their families, for whatever reason, may not be in the same position to be helpful, so we’ve got to find a wider number of contributors to the camp. And we have to find and maintain some, of course, significant contributors and, when I say that, I think I can mention that, for instance, Joe Segal has been a longtime, and continues to be a longtime, supporter, and Sam Belzberg and the Dayson Foundation, and I could go on and on, but there are fewer of those [people] than there used to be. So, we’ve got a big job to do.

“The other thing, too, is this,” he continued. “From a total number of campers during the period that the camp is open of about 300, the number of camperships is now at 105, and it is going up ... and the Jewish Family Service Agency is asking us to take more and more young people. So, all of this is a challenge.”

Fraser added, “I’m 81 and I’m very lucky to be as active and alert as I am, but there will come a time when we’re going to have to look at the leadership of the finance committee and, while I can undoubtedly continue to be useful, there will come a time when we’ve got to consider bringing other people in. That’s not something we have to do in the next six weeks or anything, but it’s something you always have to consider in any organization and, of course, I’m conscious of it.”

He concluded, “What I want people to do is to remember why Camp Miriam got started.... I got involved in this because I wanted Jewish kids to be able to go somewhere every summer and be absolutely confident in being Jewish, [and] that also is part of the purpose of Camp Miriam. Part of the purpose in the early years also was to make sure that Jewish kids fully understood and recognized the importance of their own Jewishness, their history and the evolution of the state of Israel. All of those things are just as valid today as they were then, and Camp Miriam is a way of continuing that in a very positive way. And the last thing I’ll say is this, I’m not for one minute thinking of all these young people as being just Jewish. I’m a patriotic, intensely Canadian person, and I know that these people are very, very important to our country because they’re going to have to be looking after our country for us, those are tomorrow’s influential Canadians, so this is a very Canadian venture.”

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