Author Sylvia Fraser's memoir on incest and sexual abuse was groundbreaking

It was called a memoir like no other.

"My Father's House" by author Sylvia Fraser detailed the sexual abuse she endured from her father while she was growing up in Hamilton. It lasted until she went to university at 17 and, to cope, she created a twin at age seven, who shared her body while maintaining separate memories.

"It is like no autobiography I ever want to read again," wrote Toronto Star book editor Ken Adachi when the book came out in 1987. "It is painfully, almost unbearably honest, even if it is splendidly crafted and hypnotic."

Author Timothy Findley praised Fraser - who died Oct. 25 at 87 of leukemia in Toronto - for not only writing the book "but even greater courage in allowing its publication."

Fraser, already a critically acclaimed writer of five novels, first thought about writing the book in 1984 when memories of the abuse started coming back. She moved to Beverly Hills for two years to work on it. It later became a play.

Fraser realized the book was groundbreaking.

"It was always those terrible people from some Tennessee Williams' play that did such things," she told The Spec in 2019 when the play was at the Pearl Company.

"It became apparent as time went on it wasn't just the guy that hangs around the playground. It was fathers, brothers and friends, coaches and teachers and ministers and priests. We know this now. But when I wrote the book it was too soon."

Fraser's first novel in 1972 was "Pandora" about a young girl growing up during the Second World War. In 1984, she came out with "Berlin Solstice." The novel was about Germany between 1923 and 1945.

She later wrote books about the paranormal and visits to India and Peru, and worked as a ghostwriter on memoirs by athletes, musicians and others. She wrote a history of Chatelaine magazine in 1997.

Fraser was a member of the "Toronto media mafia" that included Pierre Berton, June Callwood and Fraser's friend, editor and author Anna Porter.

Porter said Fraser was "quite extraordinary."

"She had a brilliant mind. She was fearless. She had a great sense of humour. She was always open to new things."

She recalled travelling with Fraser where her friend would "climb up to the highest point on the land, and I did not."

Porter said "My Father's House" helped others who suffered sexual abuse and said Fraser did her best to help them.

"She was inundated with letters and people crying on the phone," she added.

Fraser kept up ties to Hamilton, meeting regularly with school friends. "Pandora" and "The Ancestral Suitcase" (1996) were set in Hamilton (called Mill City in "Pandora"). In 2005, Fraser was one of the celebrated Hamiltonians who attended a gala to help the Art Gallery of Hamilton mark a $18.2 million facelift. She also donated her archives to McMaster.

"Hamilton is very important to me," she told The Spec in 1996. "It is in my bones."

Fraser was born March 8, 1935, to George and Gladys Meyers. Her father was a Stelco inspector and her mother was involved in church and community work.

"My Father's House" is on Cumberland Avenue. Her father died in 1973 and her mother died just before the book was published.

Fraser attended Adelaide Hoodless Elementary School and Central High School. She studied English and philosophy at the University of Western. In 1957, she was hired as a feature writer at the Toronto Star Weekly and worked there until it folded in 1968. She also married her high school sweetheart, Russell Fraser, in 1957. The couple divorced in 1973.

Fraser is survived by three nephews and two nieces and their families. She was predeceased by her ex-husband and her sister Irene. A service will be held Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. at Cardinal Funeral Home, 366 Bathurst St., Toronto.

Daniel Nolan can be reached at dannolanwrites@gmail.com