He received his Ph.D. in 1964 from Clark University; his dissertation was entitled The physiography of Boothia Peninsula, Northwest territories a study in terrain analysis and air photo interpretation of an Arctic area.
After the war, Fraser had a career as a Canadian government employee with the Geographical Branch, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Ottawa, publishing articles after many of his field assignments.
One of his first assignments, in the late 1940s, was as an observer on tugs in the Mackenzie River, and on Hudson's Bay Company vessels in the western Arctic Ocean.
After reviewing recent aerial photographs and old maps, Fraser determined that the Rivière La Roncière-le Noury, charted by French Missionary Oblate Émile Petitot in 1875 but considered nonexistent decades later by explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, did exist.
In 1954, he was the department's representative to the Aklavik Relocation Survey team in the Mackenzie Delta, and in 1955, he studied the southeastern coastline of Victoria Island.