According to the historian Alexander Begg, Fraser "was offered a knighthood but declined the title due to his limited wealth.

[2] He was the eighth and youngest child of Captain Simon Fraser (d.1779), of the 84th Highland Regiment, and Isabella Grant, daughter of the Laird of Daldregan.

[2] After the war ended, Simon's mother was assisted by her brother-in-law, Captain John Fraser, who had been appointed Chief Justice of the Montreal district.

In 1789 at the age of 14, Fraser moved to Montreal for additional schooling, where two of his uncles were active in the fur trade, in which his kinsman, Simon McTavish, was the undisputed leading figure.

In 1789, the North West Company had commissioned Alexander Mackenzie to find a navigable river route to the Pacific Ocean.

Mackenzie’s expeditions had been primarily reconnaissance trips, while Fraser’s assignment, by contrast, reflected a definite decision to build trading posts and take possession of the country, as well as to explore travel routes.

In the heart of territory inhabited by the aboriginal Carrier or Dakelh nation, this area proved to be a lucrative locale for fur trading and so a post, Fort St. James, was built on its shore in 1806.

For the most part, this tactic was effective, but Fraser encountered a hostile reception by the Musqueam people as he approached the lower reaches of the river at present-day Vancouver.

Returning to Fort George proved to be an even more perilous exercise, as the hostility that Fraser and his crew encountered from the aboriginal communities near the mouth of the river spread upstream.

The ongoing hostility and threats to the lives of the Europeans resulted in a near mutiny by Fraser's crew, who wanted to escape overland.

Quelling the revolt, Fraser and his men continued north upstream from present-day Yale, arriving in Fort George on August 6, 1808.

Fraser was just thirty-two years old when he completed the establishment of a permanent European settlement in New Caledonia through the epic journey to the mouth of the river that would one day bear his name.

He would go on to spend another eleven years actively engaged in the North West Company's fur trade, and was reassigned to the Athabasca Department, where he remained until 1814.

The conflict culminated in the Battle of Seven Oaks in June 1816, resulting in the death of the colony's governor, Robert Semple, and nineteen others.

Fraser was back at Fort William in 1817 when the North West Company regained possession of the post, but that was evidently his last appearance in the fur trade.