Edward Bronfman, one of Canada’s most successful businesspeople and a very active philanthropist in many areas including the Jewish community, has passed away at 77. His son, Paul, is convinced he hung on so he could attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah a couple of weeks ago. Certainly Jewlicious.

An interesting Globe and Mail obituary.

Mr. Bronfman, 77, was a slight and painfully shy businessman who avoided the media and deferred most corporate decisions to his advisers and younger brother Peter, who died in 1996.

Their company, Edper Investments Ltd., a contraction of their first names, reigned in the 1980s as Canada’s most powerful business conglomerate, with control of some of the country’s largest real estate, natural resource and financial services companies. By the late 1980s, Edper’s 40 publicly traded companies accounted for more than 10 per cent of the Toronto Stock Exchange’s value. Its holdings once included Noranda Inc., Trizec Corp. and MacMillan Bloedel Ltd.

A shorter Jerusalem Post obituary. Interestingly, I couldn’t find an Ha’aretz obituary.

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