Lieutenant Colonel Roland Allen Harris, OBE  was born 20 November 1906, son of Toronto Works Commissioner Roland Caldwell (known as R.C.) Harris and Alice Mary Ingram.  He attended the University of Toronto schools from 1917 to 1923, and the University of Toronto until 1928 where he was a member of Phi Delta Kappa fraternity, the Officer Training Corps, and graduated with a B.A. for political science.

On 17 August 1933 at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Toronto, he married Florence Dae Lyon.

He was commissioned as a lieutenant in The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in 1932. He moved to England four years later but remained on the Reserve list of officers.

He was still working in England when war broke out and he immediately offered his services but the British Government declined them. He then returned to Canada with his wife. He returned to the active list of his regiment in 1940 and went overseas with them. He later took staff courses at Oxford and Camberley Staff college. His wife also returned to England where she served with the Red Cross.

Eventually he was appointed as the military aide to Lieutenant General F.E. Morgan of the Imperial Army who was the lead architect of the Operation Overload plan.

23 July 1945 he was Mentioned in Despatches, and in December 1945 was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire.

He died in 1994 and is buried with his parents and wife, in St John’s Norway Cemetery, Toronto.

With some info from an article in the Toronto Start 12 August 1944?