The Sylvia Fraser Award, established by publisher and novelist Anna Porter and her daughter, journalist Catherine Porter, is a $3,000 annual scholarship for students in the Justice, Political Philosophy and Law program.
Fraser, who died in 2022 at the age of 87, was a journalist, novelist, memoirist and activist. She published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books under her own name, and many more under the names of others. She was a passionate volunteer with Toronto Pig Save, an animal rights group.
But above all, she was an explorer.
Not only in the physical sense, although she travelled widely - to the Arctic, to Peru, to India, to Jordan. Fraser was an explorer of questions, propelled by an endless curiosity about people, herself, the world and, perhaps most importantly, the "Big M," as she called it: the Big Mystery of what lies beyond the senses, beyond perception and beyond life itself.
It's that curiosity, coupled with Fraser's deep sense of justice and belief in the possibility of change, that Anna and Catherine Porter hope the award will encourage in a new generation.
"Sylvia was astonishingly brave brave in every possible way," says Anna Porter, who was Fraser's close friend as well as the editor of several of her books.
"She was always searching, trying to understand what we are, what our potential is, including our potential for healing. She would want students to have a broader vision of life's possibilities."
She says the new award offers another way to ensure Fraser's ideas and the spirit that guided her life continue to inspire others.
"I'm hoping that what Cath and I are doing at McMaster, along with her books, will contribute to her legacy," Anna Porter says.
Although Fraser did not attend McMaster, the university is an important home for her literary work. Her archives are housed in McMaster's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, alongside the archives of two of her publishers, McClelland & Stewart and Key Porter Books.
That connection was a significant reason for establishing the award at McMaster, says Anna Porter.
Born in Hamilton in 1935, Fraser studied philosophy at Western University before becoming a journalist and novelist. In the first half of her career, she published four works of fiction and numerous articles, first as a feature writer for the Toronto Star and branching into other Canadian media over the years.
She helped found the Writers' Union of Canada in 1973, was on the executive of the Writers' Trust of Canada for many years, and served on the Arts Advisory Panel to the Canada Council all of which put her in contact with many of the other Canadian literary figures of the time, including Adele Wiseman and Margaret Atwood.
"Sylvia Fraser was one of a kind very courageous, very principled, very kind, and whip smart," says Atwood. "She went deep and cast light."
But despite her success, she also had an abiding sense that something was missing, says Anna Porter something that she had to find to become "a whole person."
A turning point came in the second half of Fraser's life, when news of her father's death released memories of childhood incest and abuse that she had repressed for decades.
Those experiences became the subject of her award-winning memoir My Father's House. Its publication also intensified a lifelong search for understanding and healing.
"She strongly believed that we could heal ourselves, but, more important, heal the world," Anna Porter says. "She really believed that if we tried hard enough we could cure some of what had made the world such crap."
Fraser took that search in many directions, exploring metaphysics, mysticism, the paranormal and quantum physics in her later books, some of which documented her travels to far-off places in her quest for spiritual enlightenment.
Her attention wasn't limited to her inner life. Fraser also had a strong sense of justice and a desire to protect the innocent that ran through her writing and increasingly shaped her activism.
In the last decade of her life, she became an active animal rights activist, working with the Annex Cat Rescue and, eventually, volunteering with Toronto Pig Save, joining vigils outside slaughterhouses and accompanying activists to court appearances.
Her involvement began, characteristically, with a question.
Fraser had been disturbed by the smell from a slaughterhouse near her neighbourhood, Toronto Pig Save founder Anita Kranjc recalls. After stopping to read protesters' signs and talking to activists, Kranjc says, Fraser picked up a placard and joined the protest.
For Catherine Porter, Fraser's willingness to keep learning and changing throughout her life is an especially important part of the legacy embodied in the award.
Fraser began as a journalist driven by curiosity about other people and places. Over time, that curiosity expanded to encompass fundamental philosophical questions: Why are we here? What does life mean? How can people change themselves and the world around them?
"She lived many, many lives," Catherine Porter says. "What I think her life says is: You can change things. You can change things around you, and you can change you."
That outlook shows the importance of Fraser's legacy at this moment in time, particularly to students studying justice, political philosophy and law.
"Sylvia Fraser's legacy speaks to the idea that a healthy, prosperous community needs more than just jobs, investment and technological innovation to thrive: It also depends on citizens willing to question assumptions, engage with difficult problems and imagine better ways forward," says Violetta Igneski, chair of McMaster's Department of Philosophy.
"For young Canadians facing an increasingly complex economic, social and political landscape, Sylvia's example shows that curiosity, critical thinking and civic engagement are part of how communities and countries face challenges and create new possibilities."
Anna Porter also describes today's world as tougher for young people and a more difficult place in which to find one's footing. What Fraser offered, she says, was the willingness to approach difficult problems from unexpected angles and to imagine that things could be different.
For the Porters, the Sylvia Fraser Award is intended to encourage precisely that spirit: students willing to ask difficult questions, challenge injustice, remain open to new ideas and imagine possibilities beyond the obvious.
"If ever there was a time that we needed people to try and change things, it's now," Catherine Porter says.
