My name is Bill Frazer. I was born in 1945 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up on a mixed farm 90 miles north of there. After graduating in 1963 I left home to become a Sub-Lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm (as a carrier pilot) in the Royal Canadian Navy. 

In 1967 I joined Air Canada as a First Officer but, not happy as an airline pilot, I moved to Los Angeles in 1970 and spent the next 5 years flying mostly entertainers. In 1976, soon to be married, and sick of living in Southern California as it transformed from beautiful "Beach State" to insane metropolis, my betrothed and I moved to Northern Saskatchewan where I started a fly-in fishing and charter air service.

Two years later we moved to Vancouver Island on Canada's west coast  (we had both missed the ocean) where I started Cougar Air Tours. This was mostly for salt and freshwater fly-in fishing, but also encompassed everything from white-water rafting and glacier hiking, to sailing the Gulf Islands aboard a 51' ketch, to coastal camping adventures on Vancouver Island. In 1980 I received an award from the British Columbia Ministry of Tourism for my efforts. Please enjoy the scenes by clicking on these thumbnails of our brochures from that time:
  

Becoming involved in waterfront property development, and having assumed the operation of the multi-million dollar River's Inlet Resort (including its debt), the sky-rocketing interest rates of 1981 wiped me out - including my first marriage. In fact, avoiding bankruptcy took five years as the Chief Pilot for Hunt Petroleum to finally pay out everything and everyone. But that was still a pretty enjoyable time, largely spent fishing the Artic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and their tributaries, including 3 or 4 weeks each summer wandering around the Artic in a Beaver floatplane.  Additionally, in 1985, I became a Captain for N. American Airlines, but the following year, after falling in love with a young musician and a whirlwind two month romance, we were soon touring full time. I produced and booked the show, MC'd and ran the lighting and sound, while she played flute, sax, sang and danced in a Vegas-style musical variety show incorporating everything from fire-breathing and trapeze to magic, with the participation of all the family pets: a 17', 130 pound Burmese Python (named Floyd), a little Ball Python (named Pinkie), Gidget (a Catalina Macaw), an Indonesian monkey by the name of Herman (who had been on his way to an HIV research lab when we adopted him), a couple of doves, and fourteen other birds (an African Grey, Parakeets, etc); and from July of 1988, a Siberian Tiger named Qadesh.

Qadesh was not the first big cat to live with me - that started back in '67 when I was still flying for Air Canada - but she was the first to get to be more than just a pet at home. I had become convinced that the best hope for saving at least one more of these magnificent creatures from death and/or lifelong imprisonment was to completely immerse her, every second of every day, in a totally socialized environment: eating, sleeping, playing with people, sharing their home, their bed, everything... to become truly domesticated, in other words.

And that has been the case, more successfully than in my wildest dreams. Qadesh grew up in four and five star hotels but, like all our pets, never spent more than a few minutes on stage with my wife while I addressed the audience about the need for society to change its priorities in regard to resource management, raising their awareness of how we are driving into extinction a species of life every few minutes, never to be seen again.

This was, and remains, our mission, our personal agenda: to use entertainment and personal contact to facilitate the platform by which to educate and motivate people to become more sensitive to their impact on the environment, and more tolerant, not only of other people, but all life-forms. We also knew that using animals in such a venue would attract tremendous controversy and, therefore, media attention; again furthering our agenda to raise the public's awareness of the issue. This was an enormous success, resulting in literally hundreds of newspaper stories (now numbering 47 front page, with colour photos), magazine articles, and many live TV and radio appearances.

Our son was born in the summer of 1995, but as he turned two my wife and I separated, shut down the touring show, and I 'semi-retired' to devote all my time and energies to caring for him and our 'Big Kitty'. The only alternative would have been to imprison Qadesh - something I would obviously never have done. Like everything, however, there was a silver lining: I was now free to spend a great deal more time with my son. I did continue to take almost every opportunity to introduce Qadesh to the public in continuing my agenda of trying to open people's eyes to both the reality of resource mismanagement, and also to the true nature of the real disposition of these creatures.

Man is the only species that kills for the 'sport' of it - all others, only for survival. Like so much other 'common knowledge' in our society, most of it is more 'common ignorance', rather than actual knowledge. If you review the many testimonials posted on Qadesh's site you will read, again and again, as professionals and lay persons alike describe how she was more gentle and more affectionate than almost any of the so-called 'domesticated' pets any of them have ever met or observed.

Everyone who was willing to meet her, got to, and to judge for themselves; and universally, without exception, were willing to challenge anyone else to find a happier or more contented creature, or a greater joy to experience.