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Fraser Family fonds
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Fraser Family fonds

  • UTA 1289
  • Fonds
  • 1858-1992

Records of the Fraser family, principally William Henry Fraser, Professor of Italian and Spanish, and his wife, Helene and two of their children, Donald Thomas and Frieda Helen, both professors in the School of Hygiene. Fonds also contains the records of Frieda Fraser's lifetime companion, Edith (Bud) Bickerton Williams, a veterinarian, including extensive correspondence between Frieda and Bud that documents their personal lives as a same-sex couple, as well as their professional lives as women in medicine in the early 20th century. The correspondence has been noted for its significance both in terms of both Canadian lesbian history and the history of medicine. [1]
Also included are course and laboratory notes, lecture notes, research files and notebooks, addresses, drafts of articles, prize books, photographs and slides, sketches and watercolours, the Zahn Family Chronicle and other family history items.

[1] Perdue, Katherine, “Passion and Profession, Doctors in Skirts: The Letters of Doctors Frieda Fraser and Edith Bickerton Williams,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 2005 22:2, 271-280, https://doi.org/10.3138/cbmh.22.2.271

Fraser, William Henry

Fraser Family 1995 accession

Records of the Fraser family, principally William Henry Fraser, Professor of Italian and Spanish, and his wife, Helene and two of their children, Donald Thomas and Frieda Helen, both professors in the School of Hygiene. Fonds also contains the records of Frieda Fraser's lifetime companion, Edith (Bud) Bickerton Williams, a veterinarian, including extensive correspondence between Frieda and Bud that documents their personal lives as a same-sex couple, as well as their professional lives as women in medicine in the early 20th century. The correspondence has been noted for its significance both in terms of both Canadian lesbian history and the history of medicine [1].
Also included are course and laboratory notes, lecture notes, research files and notebooks (including work done during World War II), addresses, drafts of articles, prize books, photographs and slides, sketches and watercolours.

[1] Perdue, Katherine, “Passion and Profession, Doctors in Skirts: The Letters of Doctors Frieda Fraser and Edith Bickerton Williams,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 2005 22:2, 271-280, https://doi.org/10.3138/cbmh.22.2.271

William Henry Fraser sous-fonds

This sous-fonds documents the career of William Henry Fraser as professor of Italian and Spanish at the University of Toronto and as a writer of high-school textbooks. It also includes correspondence by his wife, Helene Zahn.

Fraser, William Henry

Memorabilia

This series of memorabilia includes programmes for reunions of University College clubs (1890, 1900), programmes of the University College Modern Language Club (1892-1905, 1907-1909) and of Victoria Modern Language Club (1904-1905), undated sheet music, and a scrapbook of press clippings on political and other topics from the Toronto Globe, Saturday Night, World Wide, and The Times (1911-12).

Included are W. H. Fraser's prize books, received while a fourth year honours student in modern languages in University College in 1880. Six of these are signed, and the seventh is unsigned.

Correspondence

There are two lots of correspondence in this series. The first consists of correspondence to and by William H. Fraser. There is a little, mostly letters to the editor on university topics, before his appointment as lecturer in 1887. The bulk, however, consists of correspondence with various publishers of his volumes of French and German grammar.

The second lot is correspondence received by Helene Fraser from friends and relatives, including her husband and her sister-in-law, Margaret (Emma) Fraser, who regaled her with stories about the Modern Languages Association. Perhaps the most revealing letter is one dated 23 April, 1927 from Helene's old friend, Antionette (Nettie) Bryant, advising her at length on how to handle the relationship between Frieda and Bud.

Lecture notes

This series begins with a register of students in Italian, Spanish, and Phonetics for 1914-1915 for all four years in the pass and honours courses.

Professor W. H. Fraser's lectures in Italian and Spanish cover a substantial portion of the period (1887-1916) that he held the position of lecturer and then professor at the University of Toronto. The lectures in Italian are for third and fourth year students. They begin in 1892 and, though some are undated, end around 1910. Once written, the lectures, or parts thereof, were delivered in subsequent years to students in the same year and, occasionally, other years as well. Accompanying the formal lecture notes are lessons, notebooks on morphology and phonology, miscellaneous exercises, and notes on humour.

The dated lectures in Spanish cover the period 1892-1911; some are undated and were written for third and fourth year students. Topics include the novel, history of the language, phonology, phonetics, prosody, and literature.

There is one file of lectures in French, for a third year course offered in 1893-1894.

Addresses

The addresses in this series are largely public talks, some of which were written on cards, that were delivered in conjunction with lantern slide shows that were highly popular at the turn of the century. The subjects are art, architecture, literature and history, the locales largely Italian, with a few nods to Spain. The single non-Romance address is on German proverbs. The talks on Michelangelo and Raphael were much in demand. They were delivered as part of the University's popular Saturday Lecture Series and, along with others, at numerous locales across southern Ontario. Student organizations, especially the Modern Languages Club, were also frequent venues.

There is also [box 005, folder 01] a selection of cards with press clippings of quotations, current events and amusing anecdotes that were collected for use, in part, in his university lectures and in public talks. Only a few of them are dated; those that are range from 1905 to 1911. Most are written in English, but some are in Italian, Spanish, and French.

Manuscripts and Publications

W. H. Fraser's principal writing was of textbooks on French and German grammar, co-authored by John Squair and William Henry Van der Smissen. They were used for two generations in Ontario schools and had wide acceptance elsewhere. They went through many editions, being published in Canada by Copp Clark, in the United States by D. C. Heath of Boston, and in the United Kingdom by George Harrap in London. On his own, Fraser wrote, in 1887, Un Philosophe sous les toits, Journal d'un Homme Hereux, par Emile Souvestre, and, later, a slim volume of Italian Exercises. Associated with the last is a scrapbook, mounted pages cut from a French grammar text with annotations in Italian.

Graphic material

This series consists of photoprints and photonegatives taken by or belonging to W. H. Fraser and his wife, Helene. Included are formal and casual family snapshots, photoprints and negatives of a trip to Europe in 1905, and several images taken during World War I.

Personal and biographical

Biographical information, will, address books, diaries, certificates, notebooks, and related material documenting the private activities of Frieda Fraser. The "five-year" diaries record a wide variety of her activities, the weather, bird sightings and gardening from about 1972 to 1983. The notebooks document her passion for gardening (1941-1978) and a trip she took in 1956. There is a substantial file on her mother's estate (1937-1970).

Graphic material

This series consists of photoprints, some photonegatives (including nitrate negatives), and slides documenting the activities of the Fraser family over two and more generations. While most of the images document the activities of Frieda and Bud, individually and together, there are numerous images of other members of the family, especially at the cottage at Go Home Bay and, occasionally, in other places such as the mountains of British Columbia. There are also a few images of relatives in Germany and some of colleagues and friends.

This series has not been arranged. Boxes B1995-0044/003 to /010 contain photoprints and negatives, with the occasional slide. Boxes B1995-0044/011 to /014 contain slides.

Correspondence

This series consists of letters received by Frieda from Bud, and from her friends and family. Frieda and Bud were separated for long periods in the 1920s and the 1930s and did not live together until the end of the 1930s, following the death of Frieda's grandmother. The house they shared, on the Niagara escarpment near Burlington, had been purchased by Frieda's mother some years earlier. Built in 1834, it was situated on a large acreage with an orchard on the slope behind. When apart they wrote to each other frequently, often every day and sometimes more than once a day.

Some of the correspondence is undated, but only a few letters pre-date 1925 and these are from Frieda's college friends. Most of the letters were written by Bud to Frieda, between about 1925 and 1942. They cover all aspects of their lives, professional and personal, including relationships with their families and friends and how same-sex love was perceived.

For the period up to 1950, the remainder of the correspondence is from friends whom Frieda retained in adulthood, along with a few letters from and about members of her family, including relatives in Germany. There are fewer than a half-dozen letters for the period between 1950 and the mid-1960s.

Nearly all the later correspondence dates from 1976 to 1979, the very trying years during which Bud struggled with the effects of her stroke. Letters and cards poured in from concerned colleagues, friends, and relatives. Those addressed to Frieda and Bud jointly are filed in this series; those addressed to Bud alone are filed in Series 2 in Sous-fonds 3. Only a representative sampling of the cards has been retained.

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