The Moral Legacy of Barry Sherman, a Canadian Tycoon

Barry Sherman was a gold-medal-winning engineering science graduate of the University of Toronto who received a doctorate in astrophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1967 her purchased the pharmaceutical drug manufacturing company, Empire Laboratories, from the estate of his maternal uncle, Louis Winter and wife Beverley, who, dying within 17 days of one another, had designated Barry Sherman as the executor of their estate. Thereafter, Sherman pursued a career in the drug industry that was both highly litigious and highly profitable. Selling Empire Laboratories, he shed financial responsibility for his cousins, the heirs of Louis Winter, and founded Apotex, a company engaged in the same business as Empire Laboratories, which grew to become Canada's largest producer of generic drugs.

On or about December 13th 2017, Sherman, by then a multi-billionaire and generous contributor to Jewish charities, together with his wife, Honey, died of strangulation at their home in Toronto's suburb of North York. Death was initially considered by police as a possible murder-suicide, but the story was changed to double homicide after Toronto's Mayor, John Tory, conveyed the Sherman family's concerns about the investigation to Toronto's Police Chief.