Steve Simmons

Steve Simmons is a Canadian sports journalist with the Toronto Sun, and nationally syndicated throughout Sun Media. He previously worked as a sports columnist for the Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, London Free Press, The Globe and Mail, and The Hockey News.

Biography Simmons was born in Toronto, and attended York Mills Collegiate Institute and the University of Western Ontario, where he was sports editor and sports columnist at the Western Gazette student paper. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario. Simmons is Jewish.

Career Simmons first wrote for the Calgary Herald (starting as a junior sports editor in 1979) and Calgary Sun (starting in 1980).

Simmons won the 2013 Sports Media Canada George Gross Award for Outstanding Sportswriting. Simmons posed the question "And hey, whatever became of Alexander Karpovtsev?" Alexander Karpovtsev was killed three years earlier in the 2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash that claimed the lives of 44 members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team, an event that Simmons had devoted his September 7, 2011 column to. The reference to Karpovtsev has since been removed from the column.

In 2014, Simmons made headlines when José Bautista, outfielder of the Toronto Blue Jays, responded to criticisms Simmons made on Twitter about him with the dismissive reply, "who are you and why are you talking to me?" Simmons responded by claiming that a marketing firm wrote Bautista's tweets, not the star athlete himself. Bautista directly replied once more via Twitter confirming that he did in fact write his own tweets.

In 2015, Simmons created a controversy when, in a column he wrote for the Toronto Sun, he claimed that NHL forward Phil Kessel frequented a hot dog vendor located outside of his apartment on a daily basis. The column attracted the attention of ESPN personality Keith Olbermann, who awarded Simmons the title of "Worst Person In The Sports World". Within days, the accuracy of Simmons' column was called into question when contributors to a Toronto Maple Leafs related blog known as Pension Plan Puppets determined that Kessel did not live near where Simmons claimed he did. While participating as a guest on a local radio program, Simmons attempted to clarify the matter by claiming that there was a miscommunication with his source regarding the location of the hot dog vendor. He has yet to respond in print to address concerns about the accuracy of that column.

Simmons was referenced in a spoof letter supposedly written by Phil Kessel after Kessel had won the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016. The post script of the letter reads thus: "How did the country that produced literary giants like Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro also crap out Steve Simmons?"