He initially pursued a career in law enforcement but dropped out of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s training academy after being disillusioned by its treatment of Indigenous people.

[5] Then, in 1951, the Boston-area promoter Paul Bowser, who thought the tall, naturally balding Franco-Québécois looked like a German, renamed him Hans Schmidt.

Playing the character of an 'evil German', Schmidt became one of the first great heels of televised wrestling in the 1950s, drawing the hatred of fans as he battled their American babyface heroes of the squared circle.

In the 1998 A&E documentary The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling, Hans Schmidt was labeled "the classic foreign villain" - tapping into lingering anti-German sentiment in America following World War II, Schmidt was a forerunner of many other wrestling characters that successfully used the "anti-American foreigner" gimmick to enrage the crowd, such as Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik.

[7] Schmidt wrestled Lou Thesz several times for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and faced many other legends of the era, such as Verne Gagne, Antonino Rocca and Whipper Billy Watson.