(9 Sept. 1887-26 March 1965) hydrographer, author. (Robert J. Fraser, R. J. Fraser) Born in Ottawa. Parents: John Fraser, later auditor general of Canada, and his wife Mary Jane Atchison. Robert James Fraser was educated at Lisgar Collegiate Institute, of Ottawa, and at McGill University. In 1907 he entered the Canadian Hydrographic Service. He was appointed the first Dominion hydrographer, 1937, and held the office till his retirement in Nov. 1952. In WWI he was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He had the assignment in World War II of “exploring and charting a haven in Newfoundland waters” (Fraser (1959) 303) for the historic meeting of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941 which saw the writing of the Atlantic Charter. Robert James Fraser published magazine articles on hydro raphy and northern travel. As a religious writer, he published in the journal Faith at Work (New York) and was a columnist for the United Church Observer. He was married on 11 Feb. 1914 to Muriel Gordon Campbell (1889-1963). (two children)

     Robert James Fraser was the author of an important work of local and family history, As Others See Us: Scots of the Seaway Valley (1959), published by the Beamsville Express, of Beamsville, Ont. The publisher of the Beamsville Express at this time was William Fraser Rannie (1915-1995) himself an author and a grandson of John Fraser the auditor general, and as such the nephew of Robert James Fraser. As Others See Us is a study of the author’s Fraser family in Dundee Township and in GC and Ottawa. (Dundee Township, Que., is just across from GC on the south side of Lake St. Francis.) Never guilty of narrowness, the book ranges through rich material on many topics of GC history and reaches deeply into the Canadian power structure. It may be regarded as a model for writers of family histories, and is also the record of a remarkably successful family. Yet astonishing though it is as a record of achievers, historians of GC may be inclined to argue that the Frasers of Dundee and Loch Garry were not an isolated case, but that more than a few other GC families had equally brilliant records of success. Suitably to the author’s own professional background, the book pays close attention to geographical and geological detail and it includes valuable descriptions of Lake St. Francis and GC’s only other lake, Loch Garry.

     Robert James Fraser was injured in a car accident near Manotick, Ont., while driving alone from Florida to Ottawa, and he died a few days later in an Ottawa hospital. He was an elder of Dominion-Chalmers United Church, Ottawa. He left an uncompleted manuscript which Rannie completed and edited and published as R.J. Fraser and W.F. Rannie, Arctic Adventurer: Grant and the Seduisante (1972). The Glengarry Historical Society’s Fifth Annual Volume (1965-1966) included R.J Fraser’s “Scots along the Arctic Circle.” As Others See Us has been reprinted once, by Alex W. Fraser the well known Glengarry genealogist. Fraser Island in the Canadian north at the meeting of Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait was named after Robert James Fraser in 1965. (Rayburn 200-201)

Glengarry News 1 April 1965 * Fraser (1959) 12 , 303 (portrait, biog.) * biog. sketch of the author and summary of the book on dust jacket * his “The Frasers of Loch Garry,” GN 19 July 1956 * obituary of William Fraser Rannie, QAR Sept./Oct. 1995 * private information, with two undated obits. probably from Ottawa newspaper * Jean Gogo, Ten Family Histories in the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Historical Society Library (1973) * Fraser Island: Alan Rayburn, Naming Canada: Stories about Place Names from Canadian Geographic (1994) 200-201