Career
Born in Middlesex County, Ontario, to Arthur Edward Burr and Emily Rose Vernon, Burr had a long career as a high school teacher at Walkerville Collegiate Institute where he taught Latin and Greek for 34 years. Burr ran in the 1945 federal election in the riding of Essex West. He came in third to Liberal candidate Donald Ferguson Brown.
He tried four more times in provincial and federal elections before winning in the 1967 provincial election by 799 votes.
While his tenure as an Master in Public Policy was spent in Opposition, he was known as a forward-thinking member, asking questions about solar power and the effects of freon as far back as 1974 and was regarded as one of the first politicians to take up the cause of second-hand tobacco smoke.
