The former journalist and former chair of the Canadian Polar Commision Whit Fraser discusses his memoir True North Rising: My Fifty Year Journey with the Inuit and Dene Leaders Who Transformed Canada’s North (Random House Canada, 2023), with Joseph Planta.

True North Rising: My Fifty Year Journey with the Inuit and Dene Leaders Who Transformed Canada’s North by Whit Fraser (Random House Canada, 2023). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: True North Rising

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

In 2018, Whit Fraser published a memoir on Canada’s North. The book has just been republished, and it’s been updated with what’s happened in Mr. Fraser’s life since 2018, including becoming the viceregal consort to his spouse Mary Simon, Canada’s thirtieth Governor General. The book is full of engaging stories of his experiences in the north, first as a journalist with the CBC, covering among other stories, the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, perhaps better known as the Berger Inquiry. We get a sense of the climate, not to mention the urgency of climate change, but the people as well through Mr. Fraser’s book. There are a lot of incredibly important and fascinating people that he recounts in this book, people he met as a reporter, fellow reporters, as well through his work as chair of the Canadian Polar Commission, and later executive director of national Inuit organisation, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. We also get a sense of history as Mr. Fraser was close to the negotiations that enshrined Indigenous rights in the Canadian constitution, the progress of land claims, to the new territory of Nunavut in 1999. The full title of the book is True North Rising: My Fifty Year Journey with the Inuit and Dene Leaders Who Transformed Canada’s North. It’s published by Random House. He’s also recently published a novel, Cold Edge of Heaven. Visit www.whitfraser.ca for more information. He joined me from Rideau Hall in Ottawa last week. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Whit Fraser; Your Excellency, good morning.

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