(Harriet Mary Emma Fraser) (1870-1952), humanitarian worker. (Harriet Fraser, Hatty Fraser, Hattie Fraser, Mrs Harriet M. E. Fraser, Harriet Cameron Fraser, in newspaper references normally Mrs David Fraser) Parents: Mr and Mrs Alexander Cameron (the latter has a biog. in this dictionary). Harriet was therefore a niece of John A. (Cariboo) Cameron, and belonged to the Wood family connection. She married David Fraser in Aug. of a year which was likely 1893. Her husband’s early death in 1899 left her a widow with three children. In England, where she went in 1915, she joined the humanitarian worker Lady Drummond who had organized the Information Department of the Canadian Red Cross. Mrs Fraser worked in the Parcel Department of the Canadian Red Cross in London, and by 1919, when she made a short visit to France, she was chief of this department. (Glengarry News 23 May 1919) She helped to provide services and necessities for Canadian servicemen in hospital in Britain, and at some stage she travelled to Switzerland for the Red Cross in connection with the project of having women meet the menfolk of their family who had been interned in Switzerland.

     Appointed in 1919, when she was back in Lancaster, GC, she was from 1920 to 1922 in charge of a large hostel in London which offered lodgings and assistance to Canadians who wished to visit the war graves of their kindred in France and Belgium. (appointed Glengarry News 7 Nov. 1919; sails for England, GN 27 Feb. 1920) After the hostel was closed, Mrs Fraser, who was now the only representative of the Canadian Red Cross in London, provided assistance and advice for travellers from office space made available to the Red Cross by the Bank of Montreal in Waterloo Place, London. A columnist in Saturday Night, 6 Dec. 1924, in the warmest terms praised the services provided by Mrs Fraser at her Waterloo Place office, and urged that the office be kept open. “Do keep Mrs. Fraser over here please!,” the columnist wrote. “We can’t do without her.”

     Mrs Fraser attended the unveiling of the St. Julien Memorial to Canadian soldiers in Belgium, being presented on this occasion to Marshal Foch. In 1925 she visited the war graves in Belgium and France with officials of the War Graves Commission. Her own son Gunner D. Nevill Fraser (Nevill Fraser, sp. also Neville) was killed in the Battle of the Somme, 1 Aug. 1916. A memorial service for Nevill Fraser was held at Knox Church, Lancaster, in Sept., the service being conducted by the Rev. H. C. Sutherland. (Cornwall Standard 5 Oct. 1916) “after he had escaped a thousand deaths, his turn came.” Another son, Gordon, was wounded in the war. Mrs Fraser, an old friend of the Macmaster family, was one of the two witnesses to the will (and its codocil) of Sir Donald Macmaster. In the 1920s and 1930s, she and her daughter Louise operated an antique shop at South Lancaster, GC, and they are reported to have visited England annually to purchase stock for their highly successful shop. Mrs David Fraser was one of the Glengarrians who received the Jubilee medal which was issued in 1935 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the coronation of George V. (Glengarry News 10 May 1935) She attended a reorganization meeting for the Glengarry Red Cross Society in Sept. 1939. (Standard Freeholder 20 Sept. 1939) She is buried at Salem Church, Summerstown, GC. In 1937, her daughter Louise (1898-1967) married Eric Motzfeldt (1908-1967). As Major Eric Motzfeldt, he was wounded in WWII. Louise Motzfeldt and her husband were killed in a car accident near Gananoque, Ont., 30 June 1967.

Gravestone * A.L. Dunlop, “Services of Mrs. David Fraser in World War I Are Recalled,” Standard Freeholder 29 April 1948 (important, detailed, factual report on her Red Cross work 1915 into 1920s) * private information * Trevor Holland, Glengarry Life 1980, on Mrs Fraser’s antique shop * leaves for England with Miss Macmaster (dau. of the future Sir Donald) , Glengarry News 28 March 1913 * sails for England, GN 3 Feb. 1915 * poem by Rev. J.U. Tanner on death of D. Nevill Fraser, Cornwall Freeholder 29 March 1917 * name of Nevill Fraser, war memorial, Alexandria * unveiling of war memorial tablet she contributed, Knox Church Lancaster, GN 1 April 1921 * Mrs Fraser and her daughter Louise returning to Canada from visit to England, GN 5 April 1935 * noticed CF 16 & 23 Jan. 1919 (portrait), 14 Aug. 1919, Cornwall Standard 18 Dec. 1924 * Motzfeldt: GN 4 Aug. 1944, 6 July 1967 * David W. Lloyd’s Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919-1939 (Oxford & NY, 1998) portrays the cultural setting for her post-war work but does not mention her name and is not in fact the kind of book that mentions particular individuals