(15 April 1871-12 April 1949), businessman. (Neil Fraser) Born at Fraser’s Ridge Road, Vankleek Hill. Parents: Kenneth Fraser and his wife Jeanet McCuaig. Neil Fraser attended Fraser’s Ridge elementary school. He worked in shanty three winters in Michigan, but because a childhood injury had left him lame his brothers are said to have encouraged him to learn a trade and thus secure a life less strenuous than that of bushwork. Choosing cheesemaking as a trade, he attended dairy school at Guelph, and graduated in 1900. He became a cheesemaker at McCrimmon, and was also a partner in a store there. The cheese factory was closed during the winter, which was usual with cheese factories, but the store provided him with year round occupation. In the early 1900s, he left McCrimmon and moved to Vankleek Hill. Thereafter his business career was based at Vankleek Hill.

     Neil Fraser, who became one of the leading men in the cheese manufacturing of his area, operated cheese factories at McCrimmon, Skye, Fisk Corners, Hawkesbury (Hawkesbury Dairy), Fournier and Barb. The first three of these were important in the farming economy of northern GC. (Fisk Corners rarely appears on maps; its cheese factory was at the south end of Lot 13 in the 9th Concession of Kenyon.) The McCrimmon cheese factory he purchased from W.D. McLeod.

     The Fraser trucking business (begun about 1928) involved shipping cheese to Montreal and carrying back mixed freight for delivery at Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill and the area around them. Also, Fraser established a cold storage plant (opened 1937) at Vankleek Hill. This plant served the needs of many cheese factories beyond those owned by himself. As a businessman he was involved with the Vankleek Hill cheese-grading station, but he probably did not own it. Also, he sold dairy supplies and cheese-factory equipment. In 1920s and 1930s he owned and operated a cheese-box plant at Vankleek Hill. He was a buyer of cheese for the Montreal exporters George Hodge Ltd and P.W. McLaggan. Neil Fraser was also an agent for Western Insurance Co. He was mayor of Vankleek Hill, 1943-1945. From 1945, he was a partner with his son John Fraser. Neil Fraser died at his home in Vankleek Hill. He was a Presbyterian, and was a church elder for over 40 years.

     He was married (1) about 1904 to Helen Mary McCrimmon (7 Jan. 1878-26 April 1920), of McCrimmon, Ont.; she was a niece of Angus McCrimmon, the crown attorney of Elgin County (five children), and (2) in 1923 to Evelyn Isabella Sample (14 Sept. 1889-1 Aug. 1962), of Vankleek Hill. Neil Fraser’s daughter, Madeline Jean Fraser (later Mrs Shavalier), a WWII nurse, narrowly escaped death after her ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, 1943. (story, Vankleek Hill Review 5 Nov. 2003)

Glengarry News 15 April 1949, repr. Fraser Obits. 74 * private information * gravestone, McLaughlin Cemetery, Highway 34, Cornwall Standard of Vankleek Hill * Lochinvar to Skye, 137, 249-251, 260, 435-436, 494-498, with portrait John & Neil Fraser * MacKinnon 161, 262-269 * Heather Menzies, By the Labour of Their Hands: the story of Ontario Cheddar Cheese (1994) 8, 69, 100, 108, 116, 122, 137, 143, 170 * Rutley: index * MacGillivray & Ross Chapter XII * Standard Freeholder 13 April 1948, Hawkesbury Dairy Co. sells its plant to Neil Fraser & Son