Earlier in his life McCormack was a marine radio operator and British colonial police officer before coming to Canada in the late 1950s.
[1] He was the son of British Colonial Police colonel William McCormack who was decorated with an MBE by the King for his work with prison reform and children's polio.
[2][3] With another constable of the Bermuda Police, Rick Hodgson (who would go on to become a Superintendent in the Ontario Provincial Police), he had pulled over Jean Orilla Kernick, a Canadian employed as a bank teller by the Bank of Bermuda, who was riding a moped with a faulty light.
The two married in 1958 at St. Theresa's cathedral in the City of Hamilton, with the reception held at Admiralty House, Bermuda (which had been pressed into use as accommodation for police officers, including McCormack, after the Commander-in-Chief of the America and West Indies Station had been abolished in 1956) and returned to Toronto with her in 1960.
A son also named William resigned from his post as a plainclothes Toronto police officer in 2009 following an internal misconduct investigation;[8] criminal charges for soliciting and accepting bribes in that regard were subsequently stayed for 6 years of excessive delays by Crown prosecution, with the judge laying blame on the lead police investigator.