The Toronto Star News Story
August 19, 2000

Obituary
DR. MORTON SHULMAN

http://www.thestar.com/editorial/news/20000819NEW01b_CI-MORT19.html

Man of many hats Morton Shulman dies at 75
By Nicolaas van Rijn = Toronto Star Staff Reporter

Dr. Morton Shulman, who began his career as a family physician and went
on to
reinvent himself as a coroner, investor, politician, journalist and
millionaire businessman, has died from complications of Parkinson's
disease.

It was the one challenge he couldn't meet.

``Just say I've been lucky in my life,'' the Toronto icon said in 1982.
``Because it's true.''

Dr. Shulman, who spent the last decades of his life battling the
disease's steady erosion of his body, died yesterday at Baycrest Centre
for Geriatric Care of complications from the disease. He was 75.

``He was one of a kind, exceptionally creative, brilliant,'' son-in-law
Stewart Saxe said.

``He had a phenomenal ability to always be about 30 seconds ahead of his
time - that's the edge.

'`If you can actually be on the edge, you can be very successful, and in
everything Morty did he was on the edge, the leading edge - whether it
was as a coroner, an MPP, as a television journalist - he virtually
invented confrontational journalism.''

During his many different careers, Dr. Shulman maintained a thriving
family practice on Roncesvalles Ave.

``He restricted his practice to the local community,'' Saxe said. ``At
all times, through the fame and everything else, he maintained his
day-to-day practice for his patients in that area.''

The man Toronto - and much of Canada - would come to know as a
self-contained, flamboyant extrovert began life, according to one
friend, as an ``awkward, unattractive, almost universally rejected
boy.''

In typical fashion, Dr. Shulman put it best himself.

``I was a skinny Jewish kid in a WASP North Toronto area, who was no
good at
sports and too good at school. My parents were okay but the rest of my
childhood was terrible.

``I was very much the ugly duckling; the girls always laughed at me.''

That didn't last long.

Born in Toronto, Dr. Shulman studied medicine at the University of
Toronto,
graduating with his medical degree in 1948. By 1952 he was working as a
coroner, and he served as Ontario's chief coroner from 1961 to 1967,
becoming theinspiration for the TV show Wojeck.

``I was thrown into a position of power, by chance, and I loved it,'' he
once recalled.

'`I never got over it. I could do things, make things happen.''

Along the way he became a stock market millionaire - a feat achieved
like almost everything else in his life, by chance.

``I was conned,'' he once told an interviewer. ``When I got married, a
relative gave me a tip on a penny stock and I put my life savings into
it.''

He lost $400, but, determined to make it back, returned to the market
with a
vengeance. By 1966 he'd published the first of his seven books, Anyone
Can Make A Million.

Chance offered him another opportunity to reinvent himself in 1967, when
a newly elected Conservative administration gave him the boot as chief
coroner.

``The Tories fired me and I wanted revenge,'' Dr. Shulman once
explained. ``I went to see the Liberals and (Robert) Nixon offered me a
cabinet post (if elected) and then Elmer Sopha (the then-Liberal MPP for
Sudbury) was quoted in The Star saying bad things about me, so I phoned
Donald MacDonald (leader of the NDP) who had been calling me.''

 That's how Dr. Shulman became the New Democrat MPP from High Park, a
consistent thorn in the side of the Tory administration.

``The only thing we had in common,'' confessed the millionaire investor
and art collector of his affiliation with the NDP, ``was our hatred of
the (Conservative) government.''

Constantly in and out of the headlines - he was once targeted by the
Mafia - Dr. Shulman also hosted a lively talk show that bore his name,
The Shulman File, on Citytv from 1975 to 1984.

His self-made fortune gave him the freedom to constantly reinvent
himself, and his sheer brilliance enabled him to carry it off, his
son-in-law said.

``I think he was proudest of having been financially independent,'' Saxe
noted.

``That was the foundation on which he could pursue everything else.''

The final reinvention came in 1983, after Dr. Shulman spotted a
troubling symptom in one of his legs.

``I was a rich man,'' he recalled. ``There was no further need (to make
money).

``Then, in 1983, I had a tremor in my left leg; looking back, it was the
beginning'' of Parkinson's and a new career.

After hearing of the Hungarian drug Deprenyl from Toronto Western
Hospital
physician Dr. Tony Lang, Dr. Shulman founded Deprenyl Research Ltd. and
acquired rights to distribute it in North America. He fought a lengthy
battle to win Canadian testing approval for the drug, now an accepted
Parkinson's treatment.

After sagging share prices prompted a new board of directors to pension
off Dr. Shulman in 1993, he began promoting other ventures, including
distribution of the drug Libido, which he described as ``a proven,
potent aphrodisiac.''

Along the way, Dr. Shulman told the story of his own life. His books -
all of them autobiographical - include Anyone Can Make A Million, The
Billion Dollar Windfall, The Coroner, Anyone Can Still Make A Million,
Member Of The Legislature, Anyone Can Make Big Money Buying Art and How
To Invest And Profit From Inflation.

``He was living four times the life of any normal mortal,'' his
son-in-law said.

``Contemplating doing half of what he did would exhaust me - he lived at
a speed which is different than the normal mortals I know.''

Dr. Shulman left a legacy ``of doing more, of working hard,'' his
daughter Dianne once said. ``If you have an advantage, you have an
obligation to use it for the wider good.

``I decided very early on that I wanted to be like my father,'' said the
environmental lawyer. ``I wanted to go out and save the world and be
widely respected.

``I wanted to do the right thing, and do it well.''

Dr. Shulman leaves his former wife Gloria Bossin, daughter Dianne Saxe
and her husband Stewart, son Dr. Geoffrey Shulman and his wife Dr.
Charlene Linzon and eight grandchildren.

A graveside service will be held in the community section of Pardes
Shalom Cemetery on Dufferin St. at 1 p.m. tomorrow.
  Copyright* 1996-2000 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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