Former Member of Parliament John Godfrey aptly called the Putting Science into Action conference in Sackville, New Brunswick, a gathering of friends of Fraser Mustard (FOFMs). The 300 FOFMs included children's advocates in the form of scientists, decision makers and professionals from education, health and early childhood. Speakers and audiences shared a common framework of understanding that Fraser has nurtured for the past two decades. Fraser's conviction that early human development sets the foundation for lifelong learning, behaviour and health tracks forward from the 1990s and the population health and human development programs at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, to the 1999 landmark Early Years Study: Reversing the Real Brain Drain (1) and his founding of the Council for Early Child Development in 2004. His work has jettisoned early child development to prominence on the public radar, and has opened up political space across Canada and internationally to consider significant public investments in early childhood.