Career
Pierre Berton described Frayne as “likely Canada"s greatest sportswriter ever."
He began his journalism career with the Brandon Sun at the age of 15 covering minor hockey and moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba three years later to accept a job with the Canadian Press and the Winnipeg Tribune in 1938. He shared lodgings with Winnipeg Free Press columnist Scott Young and befriended Tribune columnist Ralph Allen. He covered his first World Series in 1941 and interviewed Joe DiMaggio.
He left Winnipeg in 1942 for Ontario leaving his childhood nickname behind in favour of his given name of Trent.
He followed Young and Allen to Toronto and joined the Globe and Mail as a general reporter earning $45 a week. Frayne resumed his work as a full-time sportswriter when he joined the staff of the Toronto Telegram.
He moved to Maclean"s Magazine in the 1950 where Callwood was by then working as a freelancer. Frayne and Callwood also hosted the Canadian Broadcasting Company Television talk show The Fraynes in the 1954-1955 television season.
In 1959, Frayne was hired by the Toronto Star as a feature writer and, from 1962 to 1968, worked as a publicist for the Ontario Jockey Club before resuming his journalism career and then moving to the Toronto Sun in the 1970s.
From 1983 to 1989 the couple both worked as columnists at the Globe and Mail. Frayne wrote monthly columns for Maclean"s from 1989 until his retirement at the age of 78 in 1997. During his career, Frayne"s work has also appeared in Chatelaine, Sports Illustrated and Saturday Evening Post magazines.
In 2002, Frayne was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.
Frayne"s memoir is titled The Tales of an Athletic Supporter. He and Callwood had four children, Jill (born 1945), Brant (born 1948), Jesse (born 1951) and Casey who was born in 1961 and was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1982.
He died at the age of 93 of pneumonia and complications related to old age. Frayne is survived by three children and his extended family.
