Bruce Fraser

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Dr. Bruce Fraser attended elementary school in Campbell River, Nanaimo, Vernon and Vancouver.  He graduated from High School in Victoria and completed his university education at UBC.  During his youth he worked in the bush helping to lay out logging roads and conduct forest inventory in the Cariboo, surveying power lines in Kamloops and helping scientists with biological research on Vancouver Island.  During university he spent a year out teaching grades 7-10 in Grassy Plains, on the far side of Francois Lake, west of Burns Lake. After graduation with his doctorate, he joined Selkirk College in Castlegar just as the community college movement in the province was taking shape.  There he taught forest ecology, biology and community planning before becoming a senior administrator.  Throughout his teen years, his university years and his college employment he was an active leader in the Boy Scouts of Canada acting as a troop leader, scoutmaster and Regional President.

Bruce is an ecologist by training and has worked extensively in British Columbia as an educator, government official and consultant.  He is past president of both Selkirk College in Castlegar and Malaspina College in Nanaimo.  He spent five years with the provincial government as Executive Director of Post Secondary Education, responsible for development of programs in the community colleges and institutes of the province.  As Special Consultant on Public Involvement for the BC Forest Service he developed public involvement programs dealing with forest practice issues throughout the province, from Creston watershed to the islands of Haida Gwai and authored the Ministry’s Public Involvement Handbook.  Most recently he spent 6 years as the Chair of the province’s independent Forest Practices Board, which audits the forest management performance of both industry and government.  Recently, he acted as Chair of the province’s Task Force on Species at Risk, publishing their report in August of 2011.

Dr. Fraser’s consulting work in British Columbia spanned 17 years in facilitating land use planning, environmental conflict resolution, community economic development and organizational strategic planning.   This work took him to all parts of the province to work with over 30 rural communities, from Fort Nelson, to Golden to Gold River on their local economic development initiatives.  He has worked with organizations as diverse as the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA), the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Community Caregivers and the Columbia Basin Trust. Bruce co-developed the “Mayors Institute of British Columbia” which brought rural community mayors and First Nation Chiefs together on topics of community economic development.

Nationally, Bruce led the development of a Dene Studies Curriculum for the Northwest Territories, a Drug and Alcohol Education Program for Nunavut and served as President of the Canadian Bureau for International Education, dealing with the welfare of international students in Canadian universities and colleges. He also designed and conducted strategic planning workshops for major national clients of the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Foundation out of Montreal.

Internationally, Bruce has worked in 20 countries of Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East on strategic human resource planning, education development, environmental management and forestry.  Notable among these was development of a human resource plan for the Indonesian Ministry of Environment, development of a post secondary education plan for the Ministry of Education of Jordan, a review of public service salary organization for the ministries of the Government of the British Virgin Islands and support initiatives for the growth of the Asia Pacific Association of Forest Research Institutions based in Malaysia. 

Dr. Fraser retired from the public service in May of 2010, but has remained active with the Cowichan Valley Regional District as a volunteer member of the Environment Commission and as an appointed member of the Cowichan Water Board that is dealing with the comprehensive management of the Cowichan River Basin.  For the past four years Bruce has taken up residence in the Shawnigan Area, where his family has been anchored since 1927.  He has experimented with full time offgrid living on his island in Shawnigan Lake and has recently moved to the banks of the Koksilah River on Hillbank Road. 

Bruce and his wife Sarah (Hammond), have a blended family of four adult children and siblings located in Nanaimo, Duncan and Victoria.  Both Sarah and Bruce were born into military families, the Frasers of the RCAF and the Hammonds of the Canadian Army.

Bruce has rendered many stories of his life and career in a book dedicated to his blended family entitled “Children of My Choosing” which is published and available on Amazon.com.