As Fraser often explains: "I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture I have remained, attached as liaison with the Canadian Consulate".

In the third and fourth seasons of the show, Fraser teamed up with Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski, after Ray Vecchio went undercover in the Las Vegas Mafia.

His mother, Caroline, was killed when he was an 8-year-old boy, and his father, Bob Fraser, (played by Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent), was murdered in the pilot episode, at this point, Benton had been with the RCMP for 13 years.

Bob, or "Fraser Sr.," as he is sometimes known, was a legendarily effective officer in the RCMP and often appears to his son as a ghost throughout the series to offer help and advice.

Fraser has had an unfortunate recurring relationship with Victoria Metcalf, a bank robber with whom he became infatuated after pursuing her into and then helping her survive a lengthy winter storm.

She later resurfaced in Chicago, blackmailing Fraser into helping her use the money from the bank robbery to buy jewels on the black market, threatening to have Ray Vecchio framed for corruption.

Having little experience with romantic matters, Fraser appears to have suppressed his emotions, often for comic effect in the series, and buried himself in the masculine pursuits of law enforcement and campcraft.

His fixation upon the criminal Metcalf, and later, his superior officer, Margaret Thatcher, (no relation to the British prime minister), was unreasonable, and he may have used his attraction to an unavailable woman as a mechanism for avoiding change in his own life.

Fraser would eventually return to Canada and, along with Stanley Kowalski, set out on an adventure to find the hand of Sir John Franklin, an explorer who disappeared while trying to discover the Northwest Passage.

"[5] The ITV documentary, made nine years after the series ended, concludes with Paul Gross saying "We never did photograph it, but I can tell you that we, (Benton and Stanley,) found it.