William Franklin Orr (May 28, 1936 – February 13, 2021) was a Canadian sports author and journalist.

Career

Born and raised on a farm near Hillsburgh, Ontario, Orr attended Guelph Collegiate and started out working for radio stations in

Chatham Chatham may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Canada * Chatham Islands (British Columbia) * Chatham Sound, British Columbia * Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi * Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...

and

Sault Ste. Marie Sault Ste. Marie is a cross-border region of Canada and the United States located on St. Marys River, which drains Lake Superior into Lake Huron. Founded as a single settlement in 1668, Sault Ste. Marie was divided in 1817 by the establishment of ...

. He also was a sports editor with the ''Guelph Mercury'' and ''Cornwall Standard-Freeholder''. He joined the ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

'' in 1961, and covered the National Hockey League, and specifically the Toronto Maple Leafs. He also wrote on the

1972 Summit Series The Summit Series, Super Series 72, Canada–USSR Series (russian: Суперсерия СССР — Канада, Superseriya SSSR — Kanada), or Series of the Century (french: Série du siècle, Séries of the Century), was an eight-game ic ...

and several IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships. He has also authored over 30 books related to sports and has contributed to over 60 additional titles. He won the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award and was inducted into the

Hockey Hall of Fame , logo = Hockey Hall of Fame Logo.svg , logo_upright = 0.5 , image = Hockey Hall of Fame, Toronto.jpg , caption = The Hall's present location on Yonge Street since 1992 , map_type = , former_name = , established = 1943 , location = 30 Y ...

in 1989 in the media category, and received a lifetime achievement award from Sports Media Canada in 2003. In 2004, he was honoured with an induction into the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame. Orr was inducted into the

Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame The Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame (CMHF) is a hall of fame run by the Canadian Motorsport Heritage Foundation as a not-for-profit charitable institution that "honours and recognizes the achievements of individuals and institutions that have ma ...

in 2021, with voters citing his contribution to motorsport coverage in ''The Toronto Star'' as significant to Canadian motorsport. Orr resided in Etobicoke with his wife Shirley. He died on February 13, 2021, at the age of 84.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orr, Frank 1936 births 2021 deaths Canadian sports journalists Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award recipients People from Wellington County, Ontario People from Etobicoke