SH5215 Rifleman Norman Philip Ferland was born 8 January 1934 in Duck Bay, Manitoba, the son of Joseph and Exilda Guiloche. His siblings were René, Walter and Nellie Florence.

He enlisted with The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada on 10 March 1953 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The QOR were sent to Korea after a cease-fire was in place however, Ferland was killed when an army truck from which he’d just exited, backed over him.  A friend, James Eagle described what he heard in an oral interview with the memory project:

We lost some guys there. One of my friends is over there. He got run over by a vehicle. Was the first one to get killed by accident. Norman Ferland was his name from Duck Bay, Manitoba. And, that one evening, prior to that, a bunch of them, there was people from camp out that day, they came by our lines and they come and asked me if I was going out. I said, “No, I’m staying back. I’m not going out to the canteen.” So Norman says, “You got any money?” I says, “I got two dollars,” I said, “I can give you half” – which is a dollar – “Yes, yes, okay.” The next morning, when after I got up, I look around and down at the entrance to our camp, intersection of our camp, you could see some kind of – something burning, like and people are working. Seems like they’re doing the road, or whatever. So I asked Dolphus Fleman, who was in machine guns, just – next tent to ours. I asked him, I said, “What’s going on over there?” I said, “Look over there. What the hell is that?” And he says, “Norman, he got killed last night.” I says, “He what?” “He got killed.” I says, “What happened?” “Well,” he says, “when the truck stopped and he jumped out and the people – ‘Okay go ahead and back up’,” that kind of stuff – like, he fell and the truck just backed over his head. That was it. So when I went – I did some closure. When I went in 2008 I went and visited his gravesite [in Korea]. That was the closure for me.

Ferland died on 31 March 1954. He is buried in the United Nations Cemetery in Busan, South Korea, Grave Reference: 38. 5. 3214.  He is also memorialized on the Korean Memorial in the Meadowvale Cemetery, Brampton, Ontario, and the Manitobans killed in Korea Memorial in Manitoba.

Ferland Lake, Manitoba, is reported to have been named for Rifleman Ferland in 1998.