An Evening With Whit Fraser: From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall

Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication is pleased to host an evening with veteran journalist Whit Fraser to launch his new memoir, From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall. The talk will be moderated by award-winning journalist and best-selling author Brett Popplewell.

The event will be held on Tuesday, May 5, beginning at 7 p.m. in the august surroundings of Carleton’s Dominion-Chalmers Centre, at 290 Lisgar St. in downtown Ottawa. Admission is free, but participants are required to register in advance and be prepared to present identification at the door.

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Stories of Canada

Fraser will recount the stories behind the stories in his new collection of tales drawn from 50 years of reporting on nation-changing events.

From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall is a sweeping memoir from a veteran journalist and northern chronicler, tracing a lifetime spent at the front lines of the events that shaped modern Canada.

From his youth in Nova Scotia to decades reporting across the Arctic, Fraser offers a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of major national turning points—stories he reported on up close, but never fully had the chance to tell until now.

In this memoir, Fraser brings readers into the cold, stunned morning when the Soviet satellite Cosmos 954 rained nuclear debris across the Northwest Territories, igniting one of the most secretive international military operations in Canadian history.

He revisits the tragedy of the Ocean Ranger, one of the world’s most advanced oil rigs that became the site of an unthinkable disaster. On Parliament Hill, he reports from inside the storm of the National Energy Program and the tense constitutional negotiations that affirmed Indigenous rights while dividing the nation anew.

Woven throughout is Fraser’s personal journey—his years living in the North, his friendships with leaders who transformed the political landscape, and his partnership with Mary Simon, whose swearing-in as Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General brings his story full circle.

“Whit Fraser’s reputation as a master storyteller who fell in love with Canada’s North and its peoples as a young reporter is on full display here,” former Carleton journalism professor Mary McGuire says of the book. “He tells stories with fierce passion, sharp journalistic instincts and a mischievous sense of humour that demonstrate his lifelong commitment to helping Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians know each other better—the key, he says, to reconciliation.”

Anchored by vivid reporting and personal reflection, From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall is a powerful journey through the people, politics, and places that have defined Canada—and the shifting landscape of journalism itself.