Mark Freedman, a highly respected condominium lawyer and leading advocate for patients with Gaucher disease (GD), a rare genetic disorder occurring most commonly in Ashkenazi Jews, died May 9 of lymphoma at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He was 55.
Despite his own battle with GD, which began when he was studying law at the University of Western Ontario, Freedman never complained, his wife, Judy Jacobs, said in a eulogy.
Friend Stephen Karr – a partner at Harris, Sheaffer, which Freedman co-founded in 1992 – recalled Freedman’s attendance at meetings “on days when he could barely muster the strength to come into the office, and his clients were never aware of what was transpiring.”
GD, caused by an enzyme deficiency, affects the blood system and bones. Excruciating bone pain, which Freedman suffered in the early years, is a common complication.
Karr’s eulogy began with words he wrote to honour Freedman this month at an Ontario Bar Association dinner, where Freedman was to receive an award for excellence in real estate. Freedman, who co-wrote what Karr called “the seminal textbook on the Condominium Act in Ontario,” taught in the Ontario Bar admission course from 1994 to 2005, wrote articles and lectured frequently, and appeared on local television. The Canadian Condominium Institute named him Man of the Year in 1987.
He served for the past three years as co-chair of State of Israel Bonds, Toronto’s builders’ division, and from 1988 to 1991 as chair of the board of governors at Beth David B’nai Israel Beth Am Synagogue. In 1991, he founded the National Gaucher Foundation of Canada and was president until 2007.
Freedman lobbied successfully for the funding of an effective but prohibitively expensive drug for Gaucher Disease, first in Ontario, then across Canada, spending six years meeting with government officials.
He and Jacobs first learned of the drug known as Ceredase (now used in a form called Cerezyme) in 1991, she said.
Dr. Joe Clarke, speaking at the funeral on behalf of Freedman’s medical team, said the first Ontario patient to receive Ceredase – a two-year-old who likely would have died in two or three years without it – is now 17 and doing well.
Clarke lauded his “clear and redoubtable sense of justice, superb organizational skills and single-minded commitment.”
He said Freedman “was at the forefront of research directed at developing alternative treatments.” In Israel last year, Freedman met with researchers working on a simpler form of Ceredase, which Clarke said “looks like it may be at least as effective as the original drug, and much cheaper.”
Grateful patients and their families, some of whom had travelled hundreds of kilometres, were among the estimated 900 mourners at the funeral.
Jacobs – who met her husband as an undergraduate at McGill University, where Freedman studied microbiology and immunology – recalled his ability to connect with people from all walks of life.
A native of Portsmouth, N.H., Freedman “never lost that small-town openness, compassion and respect for others,” she said. “And he was so able to laugh at himself.”
Karr said everyone used to gently kid Freedman about the couple’s frequent trips. “But,” he added, “Mark understood his condition well, and he understood the fragility of life, and was not going to put off his passion for travel until some later time.”
Freedman is survived by Judy Jacobs, his wife of 32 years; his parents Robert and Selma Freedman of Portsmouth, N.H.; his brothers Alan of Andover, Mass.; and Bert, of Portsmouth.