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John Anderson FraserCM (born June 5, 1944) is a Canadian journalist, writer and academic. He served asMaster ofMassey College in theUniversity of Toronto from 1995 until his retirement in June 2014. He is currently the executive chair of theNational NewsMedia Council of Canada.

As a journalist, Fraser received multiple national awards and chaired theCanadian Journalism Foundation until 2008. He initiated and taught a course on Canadian newspaper history atSt. Michael's College, University of Toronto.^[1][2]

During his teenage years, Fraser attended four high schools: Toronto'sUpper Canada College, Oakwood Collegiate Institute,Lakefield College School in Lakefield, Ontario, and Jarvis Collegiate Institute. A classmate of his at Upper Canada College wasConrad Black who, years later, was his employer when Fraser was editor ofSaturday Night magazine.^[3] He subsequently received a Bachelor of Arts degree fromMemorial University and aMaster of Arts degree from theUniversity of East Anglia.

At 16, Fraser started summer work as a copy boy and junior reporter at theToronto Telegram^[4] and in following summers worked as a journalist at theSherbrooke Daily Record and theSt. John's Evening Telegram. In 1971, he was named music and dance critic for theToronto Telegram and, after that newspaper's demise, was briefly in the same position at theToronto Sun. He has also written regular columns for theToronto Star and theNational Post.^[5] From 1972 to 1987, he was a dance critic, theatre critic, China correspondent, Ottawa bureau chief, national columnist, national editor and London correspondent atThe Globe and Mail. From 1987 to 1994, he was the editor ofSaturday Night magazine^[6] where he pioneered the use of mixed circulation with inserted copies inThe Globe and Mail and other newspapers in the old Southam Newspaper Group across Canada, with circulation increasing from 115,000 to 400,000.^[7] He also began a "Saturday Night" imprint of books with the publishers HarperCollins Ltd. that produced nearly two dozen titles in five years.

Fraser's journalism has been published in many leading international journals and newspapers, includingThe New York Times,The Washington Post, theChristian Science Monitor,The Guardian,The Daily Telegraph,Time,The New Republic,George,The Spectator,Paris Match and theFar Eastern Economic Review.

Much later, two years after retiring from Massey College in June 2015, he returned to the world of journalism as the founding President and CEO of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada, formed from five former press councils across the country. In that role, he forged a new media dispute resolution organization that now represents over 500 daily and weekly newspapers, digital news media platforms, magazines, and campus publications. In 2018, he was named the first Executive Chair of the NNC.

In 1995, Fraser was elected the master of Massey College and chair of its governing corporation to a seven-year term and was subsequently re-elected to two further seven-year terms. Among his achievements at Massey were a $3.5-million renovation to theRobertson Davies Library, St. Catherine's Chapel and handicap access to the college. Other achievements include increasing its endowment to approximately $12,000,000 ($7,577,184 in the college's 2005 tax return and $4,000,000 held for student bursaries at the U of T's School of Graduate Studies). Other achievements include tripling the number of senior fellows and increasing the number of non-resident junior fellows; creating bursary support to non-resident junior fellows; pioneering academic support programs for "Writers in Exile" and "Scholars at Risk"; and establishing the Quadrangle Society in 1997 which extended the college's mandate to be a bridge community between "town and gown". The Quadrangle Society originally started with 99 (one fewer member than the Junior Fellowship at the suggestion of the then don of hall, Marc Ozon), and has now expanded to over 200. He has taught university courses atYork University (drama criticism) and theUniversity of Toronto (Canadian culture, and currently the history of Canadian newspapers). At Massey, he founded the Canadian Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada. In addition, he led the process that saw the College’s St. Catherine’s Chapel named by Queen Elizabeth as the third “chapel royal” in Canada following an association with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. Fraser retired as master of Massey College in 2014 when he was named Master Emeritus and was appointed Founding Patron of the Quadrangle Society. He was succeeded byHugh Segal, retired Senator from Ontario.

Fraser has received honorary degrees fromMemorial University of Newfoundland (D.Litt.),University of King's College inHalifax, Nova Scotia (D.C.L.),York University in Toronto (LL.D.), and Trinity College in the University of a Toronto (D.S.L). He has received medals from the Queen (Silver Jubilee, 1977; Golden Jubilee, 2002; Diamond Jubilee 2012) and also the 1967 Centennial medal. In journalism, he has won threeNational Newspaper Awards, sevenNational Magazine Awards, and "Editor of the Year" from the Canadian Magazine Editors Society. His book,The Chinese: Portrait of a People was aBook-of-the-Month Club main choice in 1981 and was nominated for theGovernor General's Literary Award in non-fiction. A book on the American Ballet Theatre andMikhail Baryshnikov,Private View, was a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate choice in 1989 and won aDance Magazine "book of the year" award. In 2001, he was made a Member of theOrder of Canada.^[8] For his professional lifetime in journalism, he was named to the Canadian News Hall of Fame (2016) and later, in 2020, he was awarded the rarely-bestowed lifetime achievement Michener-Baxter Special Award for public service journalism.

Fraser is married to Elizabeth MacCallum,^[9] and the couple have three daughters and one grandson.^[10] He is a committedAnglican, and has served as both a Sunday school teacher and as rector's warden at his former church, St. Clement's-Eglinton in Toronto, and as a Sunday school teacher at St. James Cathedral.^[11] As the founder and first president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada (housed at Massey College in the University of Toronto), he remains a committed monarchist.^[12]

• Kain and Augustyn, 1977
• The Chinese: Portrait of a People, 1980
• Telling Tales, 1985
• Saturday Night Lives! Selected Diaries, 1995.
• Stolen China (novel), 1996^[13][14]
• Eminent Canadians: Candid Tales of Then and Now, 2000^[5]
• Mad About the Bay (with Elizabeth MacCallum), 2004^[9]ISBN 978-1-5526-3274-1.
• The Secret of the Crown: Canada's Affair with Royalty, 2012, House of Anansi Press, Toronto,ISBN 978-1-77089-035-0
• The Master’s Menagerie: Gaudy Night Bedtime Stories, 2014, The Battered Box Press, Toronto,ISBN 978-1-55246-942-2.

• 1944 births
• Alumni of the University of East Anglia
• Living people
• Massey College, Toronto people
• Members of the Order of Canada
• Memorial University of Newfoundland alumni
• Upper Canada College alumni
• Academic staff of the University of Toronto
• Canadian Anglicans
• Canadian monarchists
• Journalists from Montreal
• Saturday Night (magazine) editors

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