National Bestseller
In this captivating memoir, Whit Fraser weaves scenes from more than fifty years of reporting and living in the North with fascinating portraits of the Dene and Inuit activists who successfully overturned the colonial order and politically reshaped Canada-including his wife, Mary Simon, Canada's first Indigenous governor general.
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.
I will remember the look in Tootalik's eyes forever.
His was a face weathered and leathered from a lifetime of travelling across the frozen reaches of Arctic tundra and sea ice. Anyone, even a northern novice from the south like me, could tell by his stained clothing and sealskin knee-high footwear that he was a seasoned hunter. Yet the situation he faced filled him with panic and confusion.
He had to be asking himself: Why am I here? What have I done? Why is this uniformed Mountie guarding me? I imagine what was most frightening to him was standing in front of these white men in long, flowing black robes in this room with so many flags.
Why are they looking at me that way? What are they saying?
The white men in front of him included a judge, two lawyers, another man who was writing down everything that anyone said, the Mountie who'd arrested him and one broadcast reporter-me.
What did we know of his life? None of us understood Inuktitut. He couldn't speak to us. He couldn't tell his story. What's more, none of us had lived his life, venturing far out onto the sea ice by dog team, confronting and hunting polar bears, building iglus to survive Arctic blizzards, and then, following trail markers invisible
