Often misunderstood or even unrecognized, Canada's governors general are not merely heads of state; they are amongst the great constitutional curiosities of our age.In this delightful and often whimsical account of the Canadians who have held this post since 1952, journalist and author John Fraser explains the successful, if illogical, evolution of the institution and engages readers with the hilarious foibles, moving triumphs, and sombre tragedies of the men and w...

A devoted and powerful champion of Canadian arts and culture, David Silcox has a life story that dazzles with tales beyond the easel and canvas.“An affectionate portrait of a man who — through enthusiasm, charm and an unparalleled network — had an extraordinary impact of Canada’s cultural evolution.” — Charlotte Gray, author of The Massey MurderSon of a Prairie Dust Bowl preacher, David Silcox rose through the ranks of the Canadian...

Nihilism, Modernism, and Value consists of three jargon-free lectures addressed to the general reader. It explores a variety of ways in which writers responded to the phenomenon of nihilism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, By "nihilism" here is meant a sense, at times paralyzing, of the instability and perhaps groundlessness of all values. The book goes into some of the factors— psychological, sociological, philosophical—involved in that destabilizing. But its principal focus is on re...

With 50mm lenses and available light, John Fraser took these classic humanist photos in Minneapolis, New York, London, Nova Scotia, Provence, starting in 1957.In the tradition of Cartier-Bresson, there's no cropping. What you see is what was there—street interactions caught lightning fast, informal portraits, oldsters, kids, a Blues group, a campaigning JFK within arms-length, and always the impeccable composition and feel for the symbolic.The images are arranged in poem-li...

A collection of some of my poems, written in the past two decades.

The death of the Queen was only the beginning for the men and women behind the Crown.On September 8, 2022, an announcement was posted on the gates of Balmoral Castle in Scotland and Buckingham Palace in London that Queen Elizabeth II, the longest serving monarch in British history, had died. That set in motion a remarkable ten days of official mourning and ceremony unlike anything seen in any nation for decades.Members of the royal family gathered—the new K...

The purpose of this short ebook is to introduce the reader to some of the key concepts that underpin Six Sigma; making businesses faster and more competitive by understanding and eliminating the sources of variation in processes. It is not intended as an exhaustive text on the subject, more as a summary with some Soccer examples and anecdotes that will help the reader understand Six Sigma

John Fraser, Desires: Sixty-five French poems and one small but famous German one, translated and introduced by John Fraser.The core of Desires is a mini-anthology of sixty-five French poems translated by John Fraser and described in the foreword by scholar-translator Benoit Tadié as "beautiful" and "intensely empathetic." Taken from Fraser's major online anthology A New Book of Verse, they belong in an emergent re-seeing of French poetic history.Part I consists largely of...

Over sixty years of amateur boatbuilding lie behind every page. It is for readers with some woodwork experience, who have never built a boat, but would like to attempt one. It focuses on modern materials and methods; they give us boats which are stronger, longer-lasting, and far lighter than their traditionally-buiIt ancestors. And many readers will simply enjoy reading about how quality wooden boats are built.

The purpose of this short book is to introduce the reader to some of the key concepts that underpin Lean; making businesses faster and more competitive by understanding and eliminating the sources of waste in processes. It is not intended as an exhaustive text on the subject, more as a summary with some practical examples and anecdotes that will help the reader understand what is meant by Lean. This text is intended for the manager who has recently been introduced to Lean and seeks guidanc...

Faces faces faces–thirty-four, if you count a delightful movie-crew group. Fascinating faces, those major elements in movies, photography, art. Mostly one-shots, taken spontaneously in a human-scale North Atlantic city-by-the-sea in the 1990s. No predatory irony or condescension, but strong reactions– surprise, wariness, delight, self-theatricalizing, etc.Interesting individuals, including a couple of poets, two photographers, an artist, a movie-maker, a scholar, a peace activist, ...

A reviewer of JOHN FRASER'S widely praised Violence in the Arts (1973) spoke of encountering in it "an extremely agile and incessantly active mind that illuminates almost every subject that he touches." As a reader of poetry he is in search of felt life and expressive form. He feels his way forward through poems as speech acts, rather than latching onto whatever Big Poetic Truths they are presumed to be disclosing, or treating them as raw material to be given significance by Theory. And he...