True North Rising by Whit Fraser
CBC Books | Posted: December 22, 2022 7:53 PM | Last Updated: May 9, 2023
A nonfiction book chronicling five decades living in the North
In True North Rising, Whit Fraser delivers a smart, touching and astute living history of five decades that transformed the North, a span he witnessed first as a longtime CBC reporter and then through his friendships and his work with Dene and Inuit activists and leaders. Whit had a front-row seat at the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry, the constitutional conferences and the land-claims negotiations that successfully reshaped the North; he's also travelled to every village and town from Labrador to Alaska.
His vivid portraits of groundbreakers such as Abe Okpik, Jose Kusugak, Stephen Kakfwi, Marie Wilson, John Amagoalik, Tagak Curley, and his own wife, Mary Simon, bring home their truly historic achievements, but they also give us a privileged glimpse of who they are, and who Whit Fraser is. He may have begun as a know-nothing reporter from the south, but he soon fell in love with the North, and his memoir is a testament to more than fifty years of commitment to its people.
Whit Fraser is an author, former journalist and the current viceregal consort of Canada. He previously worked for CBC covering the North. He was born in Nova Scotia, lived in the Arctic for five decades and now lives in Ottawa.