Felix Blache-Fraser was a Black Canadian broadcaster, non-fiction author, film producer, film festival founder, public servant, and educator in Alberta.
Broadcasting and journalism
Born in Montreal in 1932, Fraser began his career in broadcasting in 1951, when hired at the age of nineteen by Foster Hewitt for his radio station CKFH in Toronto. In 1952, he worked as a radio announcer in Timmins, Ontario, for six months before being hired as assistant news editor at CKBB radio in Barrie, where he would become the station's sports director and play-by-play announcer, calling games for the Barrie Flyers. In 1955, Fraser moved back to Montreal, where he attended McGill University and hosted an all-night show at CKVL in Verdun. In 1956, he worked as a news editor at CFCF radio, eventually becoming chief writer. Fraser moved to western Canada in 1958, and initially worked in public relations for Saskatchewan Government Insurance. However, he also remained involved in radio broadcasting, hosting between-period hot stove league discussions on junior hockey broadcasts and sometimes doing play-by-play announcing. In 1960, he founded a newspaper called the Regina Weekly Mirror. He moved to Edmonton in 1965, where he became program manager and senior producer of the Metropolitan Edmonton Educational Television Association, Canada's first educational television channel, which aired on CBXFT. Fraser subsequently became producer/host of Newsmakers, a weekly public affairs program on ITV Global Edmonton, and then served as president and CEO of VisionTV, Toronto. In 1974, Fil moved over to the ‘opposition', to host a one-year run of his own eponymous talk show on Dr. Charles Allard's newly-launched CITV private television station, and also began what would become a five-year stint as host of a talk show on CJCA-AM radio Edmonton. In 1980 he took his talk-show host talents across town to CKXM-FM Edmonton, which had just changed its call-sign from CFRN, to avoid confusion with the AM station that used the same call letters. This series ran for three years; in 1983 he became host of Alberta Morning, the daily program that ran on CKUA-AM, then operated by Access Alberta. Later, in 1987, he became Director of Development for Access Alberta, in Edmonton. Fraser served on the Alberta Task Force on Film and the Federal Task Force on Broadcasting Policy and was the Governor of the Canadian Journalism Foundation as well as a member of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists.
Death
Fil Fraser died in Edmonton on December 3, 2017 of heart failure, aged 85. He was survived by his wife, Gladys Odegard; his four children, three siblings and extended family. He was predeceased by his parents, Felix and Marguerite Blache-Fraser, and three siblings.
Fraser's published non-fiction works include Alberta's Camelot: Culture and the Arts in the Lougheed Years, which looked at how programs by the government of former premier Peter Lougheed helped the provincial arts sector to flourish from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. His 2006 book, Running Uphill: The Fast, Short Life of Canadian Champion Harry Jerome, looked at the pioneering Black Canadian track star Harry Jerome. In 2009, he completed the book How the Blacks Created Canada, part of a series of books from publisher Dragon Hill about how different cultural groups have contributed to the development of Canada.
