began his police career as a humble rookie constable in Bermuda. Rosemary Jones profiles Bill McCormack.

Politics never thrilled Bill McCormack. Neither did policing, for that matter.

But today, as Police Chief of Metropolitan Toronto's thin blue line - Canada's largest municipal force - McCormack has more than his share of both.

Fighting shrinking budgets, smoothing force labour rifts and battling what critics call "draconian'' legislation to curb the powers of his 5,200 officers, has recently left this top cop in the public firing line more times than he'd care to remember.

"You become a figurehead,'' the 60-year-old Chief acknowledges. "When you're high profile, and the force is high profile, you have to fight the battles and hope somewhere along the line, people feel you're doing the best you can.'' It all seems a world from Bermuda, where McCormack launched his policing career at the age of 22. Fresh off 13 weeks training with the British constabulary in Staffordshire, the rookie constable made port in Bermuda on April 30, 1955 along with four fellow expats: Ian Ferguson, John Bull, John Hobbs and John Eastwood. It was the start of a five-year stint on the Island that McCormack, now reaping the kudos and heartaches that come with reaching the pinnacle of his profession, looks back on with nostalgia.

"It was something else altogether,'' he chuckles, relaxing in his seventh-storey downtown office of Metro Police headquarters, where pink-granite walls echo with the constant wail of sirens outside. "It was everything we looked forward to at that time in our lives,'' he says, his ice-blue eyes, snowy thatch and patrician stature exuding an air of quiet resilience.

In Bermuda, McCormack and the new recruits were given the standard-issue khaki shorts that were de rigeur at the time, and escorted to the old Victoria Street barracks in Hamilton. There, a crowd of single young Britons lived in "cubicles'', played darts in a rec room and partied to their hearts' content in a backroom bar. McCormack thought he'd stumbled on heaven.

It was on the heels of a riotous, night-long "initiation'' at the barracks that reality, Bermuda-style, shook a hungover McCormack from sleep on his second morning on the Island. The way he tells it, what began as a serious incident unravelled into a Monty Phythonesque farce.

"There was a tremendous din in the barracks and we were awakened to the sound of the sergeant piling us all into the truck with batons, gas-masks and steel helmets, saying there was a riot in the Hamilton prison!'' he remembers. "It was laughable more than anything else. The Deputy Police Commissioner, Max Bronte-Parker, was the consummate gentleman and he led the charge into the prison. But it fizzled quickly because one of the tear gas experts threw a cannister ahead of us and it bounced off the cell block wall. We were the ones who were gassed - and the prisoners were killing themselves laughing. That's how the riot ended. It was rather a fearsome situation!'' He has another yarn about the attempted arrest of the family of Rafael Trujillo, the assassinated dictator of the Dominican Republic. The Trujillos had fled aboard the family yacht, Angelica, with Trujillo's body allegedly in her deep freeze, and berthed in Bermuda on their way to Spain. "They were trying to escape with all their treasures, and we tried to stop them, but we were unsuccessful,'' McCormack says. "The funny part was that one detective, who shall remain nameless, did make his way on board the ship - and was promptly tossed over the side.'' If McCormack makes his experiences sound like a bad B-movie, he doesn't mean it in any disparaging way. In those heady days, the Island had fewer tourists, it suffered from minimal crime (mostly break-ins and fraud cases), andHamilton was free of even the most basic of urban trappings like traffic light. "For me, Bermuda was a milestone,'' he beams. "But it was too comfortable - that's the feeling you got.'' What he cherished most, as he pores over albums of faded black-and-white photos, is the esprit de corps he found among local and British-born officers alike. "There was a real camaraderie,'' he says. "And the Bermudian people were fantastic.'' From a policing point of view, Traffic Division was the most sought-after by the rookies. "You had the whole Island,'' McCormack explains. That's where he kicked off his stint, but a short time later was offered a district constable's job in Hamilton and Smith's parishes. He spent a year in St.

George's, before moving back to Central District where he walked the beat in Hamilton for a couple of years.

McCormack met and married his Canadian wife, Jean, in Bermuda. She was a bank employee living on the Island when McCormack and his partner, Rick Hodgson - another Briton who's now a retired Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent in the Metro area - pulled her over for a faulty moped light. The couple returned to Toronto in 1960, a move that catapulted his career far beyond his wildest expectations. Family is important to McCormack; his wife, two daughters and three sons (four of whom followed their father into the Metro force), are his strength during tough times, he readily admits.

Still, McCormack doubted the wisdom of leaving Bermuda at first. "My first night out on duty, I was standing at the corner of Yonge and St. Clair, at the beginning of January. There was about four feet of snow on the ground. It was nine degrees below zero. And I seriously thought, I should have the intelligence to go right now to a psychiatrist!'' But he didn't look back.

What followed was his steady rise through Metro's ranks: He became plainclothes officer at 29, detective at 34, detective-sergeant at 42, inspector at 46, superintendent of public affairs at 50, deputy-chief at 52 - and finally, chief at 56. He is typically modest about his success: "I suppose I was just lucky, in the right place at the right time, doing the things I wanted to do.'' McCormack spent the lion's share of those years as a homicide detective, a job that underscored the hard-core nature of his urban beat. "In Bermuda, a homicide would make headlines all year; in Toronto you and your partner would deal with at least 10 to 20 murders annually. It was a real challenge. Policing grew suddenly more fascinating for McCormack, and it was now that he realised it would be his whole life.

Such a notion would have come as a rude shock to the young William Joseph McCormack, born above a police station February 21, 1933, on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. His Irish father served on the British colonial police force and McCormack spent his first 18 years there. He points to a snapshot of himself at age four, sporting a turban and a serious expression as he stands dwarfed between two Sikh officers.

McCormack never wanted to be a police officer. "It was the furthest thing from my mind,'' he insists. So, he spent two years in the British Merchant Navy before deciding to "swallow the anchor'' and went to work as a salesman in Harrod's department store in London. "They treated you like you were still in the service,'' he says. "Examined your nails in the morning and made sure you had a crease in your pants. It was very regimented.'' Soon afterward, his father suggested he give policing a try. He found out Bermuda was seeking recruits; he applied and was accepted. Bermuda may not have given him the tough tutoring Toronto did, but serving on the colonial force was a lesson in diplomacy that stood him well during his later trials as chief.

These days, McCormack is constantly caught in the crossfire between rebellious officers, legislators eager to impress as politically-correct, and a Metro Police Services board accused on many occasions of kowtowing to demands from special interest groups over the interests of Metro officers and the public at large.

Such highly political dramas have played out against charges of racism against McCormack's officers - a claim fuelled by Police shootings of eight blacks and 11 others since August, 1988. Critics argue McCormack is from the "oldschool'' of policing,and is out of touch with the type of leadership needed in an increasingly multicultural city like Toronto.

Last summer, calls for his resignation rang loud when black youths went on a looting rampage through downtown Toronto following the widescale riots in Los Angeles. McCormack was hauled on the carpet again in the fall when thousands of Metro officers broke rank and waged a lengthy work-to-rule job action against Ontario's tough new gun-control laws. The crackdown required officers to file reports whenever they drew a gun in public. The Chief finally had to resort to seeking an injunction against his own officers to halt the uprising.

"The last three years have been the roughest in the force's history,'' he admits. "Especially when the attacks become person. I don't deal with that too well because I do take it personally ... but you have to accept it - it's part of the challenge of policing in this age. There are tremendous changes going on.'' Friend and former Bermuda constable Rick Hodgson says despite the bad-mouthing, McCormack has won respect from critics and allies alike.

"Toronto is a hotbed of problems and people have to realise what he's up against. Crime is rising, but budgets are getting smaller, and there's been no increase in staffing. The general feeling among police officers is that he is the best chief they've ever had.'' That's partly due to the fact that McCormack doesn't play politics easily - though he will fight back feistily when his force is attacked. "He's considered a participative manager,'' Hodgson notes. "His door is always open and officers appreciate how he identifies with the foot soldier.'' The admiration, it seems, is mutual. "I have great pride in the members of this force,'' McCormack declares. "No one is perfect, neither is this police force perfect ... I believe the force has made mistakes in the past and has to correct those mistakes in the future.

"But,'' he adds, "these officers belong to one of the greatest police forces anywhere in North America.'' Bermudian Rosemary Jones is a reporter with the Toronto Sun. She wrote about New Orleans in February's RG.

ON THE BERMUDA BEAT : Bill McCormack, near right, on motorcycle duty in the 1950s with friend Rick Hodgson and, below right, in khaki colonial uniform.

Bermuda, he says, "was everything we looked forward to at that time in our lives.'' Below, as he is today in Toronto.