‘Hopefully, we never stop clicking’
How Nova Scotian Whit Fraser met and married Governor General-designate Mary Simon
How did a guy from Pictou County, N.S., end up meeting and marrying the woman who is set to become Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General?
“It’s a long story,” says Whit Fraser.
Thankfully, he’s made a life out of storytelling.
In 1973, Fraser, who was born in Merigomish, N.S., and grew up in Stellarton, found himself in Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island in what is today Nunavut.
How he got there is another story, but the short of it is, he had been working part-time in Summerside in the 1960s when someone heard him on the air and offered him a job at CBC North. He knew a good opportunity when he saw it and almost immediately packed his bags.
That day in 1973, Fraser was in Cambridge Bay covering how the Inuit were beginning to organize and speak up for their rights. It was the day he met Mary Simon. She was working as an interpreter at that time and helped him with some of the names and spellings for his reporting as well as assisted with translating interviews.
Both Fraser and Simon were married to other people when they met, but they became friends and ran into each other frequently over the next two decades.
Each would climb in their careers with Fraser becoming a national reporter for CBC in Ottawa and later being named head of the Canadian Polar Commission. Simon became Canadian ambassador to Denmark (1999-2002) and Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs (19942004). Whether in the north or Ottawa when their paths crossed, they would make a point of catching up.
“I would see her many times over the course of the next 20 years,” Fraser said.
It was at a going-away party for a former employer, though, that their relationship began.
“We discovered that both of us were by now separated and single,” Fraser said. “We’ve been together ever since.”
And the chemistry that formed between the two of them, he said, has continued to this day.
“We clicked and, hopefully, we never stop clicking," Fraser said.
Since their marriage in 1994, they have visited Pictou County regularly. Last summer they returned for what they initially planned on being just a vacation but ended up lasting much longer.
Fraser explained they had always talked about buying a property in Pictou County and when they saw COVID19 cases surging in Ottawa, decided to take the plunge.
“There’s no better time to buy a cottage,” he said.
They bought a cottage in Caribou River and renovated it so they could live there year-round.
“The wonderful thing about where we bought the cottage was to discover there was at least six people in those condos who grew up on Stellar Street,” Fraser said.
Simon instantly clicked with all of them, Fraser said.
“We had one of the easiest winters we ever had. We were able to just enjoy ourselves," he said. “We were in our own little bubble. It was kind of like living in the northern community in the older days.”
Fraser knows that their lives will undoubtedly change now that his wife is assuming her responsibilities as Governor General, but they both hope to be able to make time at the Caribou River cottage an ongoing part of their lives.
“This is going to be a huge learning curve. I don’t think we have a full sense of the demands that are going to be put on Mary,” he said.
But in every conversation they have about her schedule they think about making some time for Caribou River.
Something that people might not know about Simon is that on top of all her other laurels, she is a champion sea glass picker.
Fraser is sure that on her desk in Rideau Hall will be a dish filled with Caribou River Beach glass – pieces of Pictou County at 1 Sussex Dr.