Source : Globe & Mail

EDMONTON -- 'Don't ask me to explain my life," Fil Fraser says over breakfast. "I'm an oddity even to myself."

It is a most curious résumé. Father from Trinidad, mother from Barbados via a Quebec convent. Born and raised on farmland that is today part of the city of Montreal. Bilingual. Equally at home in sports and the arts; dreamed of being radio's next Foster Hewitt, broadcasting Leafs games, and ended up putting opera on television. On this morning -- two days after Edmonton played host to the biggest outdoor hockey game ever played in the country -- he has come to argue that Alberta, home of the half-ton, is the cultural jewel of the country.

Or at least used to be.

But as Fraser says in his engaging book, Alberta's Camelot, "Alberta is a province full of contradictions" -- he being one of them -- and it is an unfortunate misconception if "few outside of Alberta think of the province as a fountain of culture."

Fraser's book is a celebration of the Peter Lougheed years, 1971 to 1985, when Lougheed, as premier, was the closest the country had to a match for then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau. They were heady years politically, but also financially, with oil booming and the province filled with opportunity.

Fraser had originally come west to work in broadcasting in Regina and ended up in Alberta, which he now considers his "spiritual home." He founded the Alberta Film Festival, the internationally renowned Banff Television Festival and produced a number of movies, including Why Shoot the Teacher, before moving on to head up the Alberta Human Rights Commission and having a hand, large or small, in almost every cultural development that took place in this province over the past quarter century.

"Sometimes," he says, "I look out there at what could have been here for most Albertans. All that wealth, everyone with a big house, sirloin cuts for dinner, three SUVs in the drive -- but no ability to go to the theatre, no symphony orchestra, no opportunity to see our own movies. . .

"What kind of life would that be?"

Two factors made a difference: one being government funding, the other being Jeanne Lougheed, the wife of the premier. Peter Lougheed, a former football star, never thought of himself as "anything but a jock," says Fraser, but Jeanne was sophisticated and had trained in both voice and dance.

"They would come to an event back then," remembers Fraser, "and Peter, the politician, would work the room and never dance. She would get me up on the floor while he was shaking hands. I grew up in a home with a father who could play Chopin and Fats Waller on the piano and I'd learned to jitterbug at the Montreal east-end Y."

Jeanne Lougheed wanted to support the arts and Fraser was but one of many with new ideas. Joe Shoctor and Brian Paisley were active in theatre, Mel Hurtig in publishing, and all of them found support in Horst Schmid, the province's colourful and often outrageous -- "Don't say my name fast!" -- Minister of Culture.

It was a time when the Banff Centre became a year-round, world-class facility. The Edmonton Symphony became internationally renowned. Calgary got the Glenbow Museum, Edmonton the new Citadel Theatre. The Edmonton Folk Festival, the Heritage Festival and the groundbreaking Fringe Festival all became successes. Alberta even produced the Canadian Encyclopedia, a magnificent production that meant those unappreciative Easterners would at least have something to read in the dark.

"The genius of the era," says Fraser, "was the matching grants program. The government said 'If you can get 25 per cent, we'll match you buck for buck' -- and that made people not only have to go out and raise their own money but it forced them to account for it. We created an atmosphere of accountability in the arts. It's no accident that so many good arts administrators come from Alberta." It is, however, a time that has largely passed, and not just in Alberta.

Fil Fraser is 71 now, although he looks and has the energy of a man young enough to be his own son, and much of his time is devoted merely to keeping the symphony alive in an era where, more and more, governments do not care to be involved.

A good many people, not just in Alberta, believe that is exactly as it should be.

Fraser, however, worries greatly that we are becoming more and more like the United States, where government stays out and corporations pitch in. Lacking the same tradition and tax breaks here, Canadian corporations are far less generous -- and Canadian culture has been feeling the pinch.

Fraser hopes his book will be "an illustration -- a lesson, if you will, of what legacy you get when you support the arts in that way.

"It makes the point that arts are a good investment."

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