Ormie Carter

Ormie came to Norval in 1930 at the age of six. His parents Pearl and Ruben Carter had become the new owners of the Hollywood Tavern located at 525 Guelph St. Norval, which was a bed and breakfast until 1933 when Halton became a “wet” County and began serving beer. Locals would say “all roads lead to Norval” since Peel County remained dry.

Ormie played hockey for the Georgetown Little NHL when Gordon Alcott formed the League in 1936. In 1942 he was scouted by Con Smythe and Harold Ballard, owner of Maple Leaf Gardens and was offered an opportunity to play for the Toronto Marlboros, but turned it down to join the army instead. Ormie wanted to serve his country and three days after his 18th birthday he signed up.

Initially he joined the Third Battalion, Queens Own Rifles, later, when overseas, volunteering with the First Special Services Force, a joint Canadian and American Special Unit. The Commando Unit established by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was nicknamed “The Devil’s Brigade” and gained notoriety behind enemy lines.

Ormie was slightly wounded in Rome, on the day of Liberation, June 5, 1944, but returned to fighting only to be captured on the top of a mountain on the border of France and Italy, near Castellar. The prisoners were shipped by cattle car to POW Camp Stalag 7, near Moosburg, Germany. While a POW, Ormie volunteered near the end of the war with the Swiss Red Cross, driving into Mauthausen and Dachau Concentration Camps bringing prisoners secretly to safety and for medical treatment.

In a 1983 interview with the Georgetown Herald, Ormie recounted dire conditions and scrounging and bartering for wood and potatoes to supplement the horse meat soup they were sometimes fed. The Camp Commandant was known to be lenient with the Canadians because he had a brother interned in a POW Camp in Alberta who was being treated well. The Commandant was eventually shot by the SS because of this leniency. When Stalag 7 was liberated by General Patton’s troops, Ormie was flown to England in a Lancaster Bomber.

By 1945 Ormie had returned to Canada and a year later began a 37 year career with Abitibi-Price in Georgetown. He and Joan Browne were married on February 23, 1946 at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Norval, where they raised five children.

In 2005 Ormie received the American Combat Infantryman Badge and in 2007, the Bronze Medal Star. The joint Canadian and American First Special Forces Unit was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015.

Ormie died in 2007 and is buried along his wife Joan Browne Carter in Hillcrest Cemetery in Norval.

Truly a Canadian Hero. Information submitted to Homes of Heros Halton Hills by Kathy Gastle

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