SAYING GOODBYE TO THE CHIEF
The funeral for former police chief William McCormack was attended Monday by family, friends and dignitaries
Jean McCormack, widow of Bill McCormack, leaves the church Monday following his funeral service at St. Paul’s Basilica Parish in downtown Toronto. Bill McCormack, Toronto’s former police chief, died last week at the age of 83.
Former Toronto police chief William McCormack was remembered with emotional tributes at a funeral service that filled St. Paul’s Basilica on Monday morning.
McCormack, 83, died last Thursday.
“The two most important things in my dad’s life was family and family,” Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack told those assembled, including Mayor John Tory, former premier Mike Harris and former mayor Mel Lastman.
“We love you, Papa, and we will miss you forever,” said McCormack’s eldest granddaughter, Erin, as she fought back tears. McCormack — a father of five, grandfather of 11, and great-grandfather of three — was remembered as “larger than life” and a “true family man.”
Following in their father’s footsteps, four of the five McCormack children became police officers.
“We should become cops,” Mike McCormack said he and his siblings thought after watching their dad in a TV interview. “How hard could it be?”
William McCormack Jr. told the service about the last hours of his father’s life. The night before his death, during what the family called “pop watch,” he said, he had “sat beside him, praying for a miracle.”
“I was born blessed. I won the lottery when I came into this world to have a father like him,” McCormack’s daughter Lisa said.
“We spoke every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” she continued. “We never parted conversations with ‘Bye, Dad.’ It was always ‘I love you.’ ”
Members of the Toronto police ceremonial division acted as pallbearers, and the procession also included members of the mounted unit and the Toronto Police Service pipe band. In a statement, Tory said McCormack will be “remembered for his dedication to serving and protecting residents of Toronto.”
McCormack joined the police force in 1959, and worked as a homicide investigator before serving as chief from 1989 to 1995.
Many remember his decades of service with his signature look, a fedora and a trench coat.
“He was the first chief that I can remember that actually went out to the communities,” current Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders said. With files from Wendy Gillis