Murray Koffler, the founder of Shoppers Drug Mart, has died at the age of 93. Koffler’s death was announced by Loblaw Companies Ltd. which is now the owner of Shoppers. Mr. Koffler was a pharmacist who broke out on his own at a time of diminishing independent drugstores when he founded Shoppers in 1962. The chain was taken over in 1978 by Imasco Ltd. and later acquired by Loblaw in 2014 for $12.4 billion. In the wake of his enormous success with the drugstore chain, Koffler dedicated much of his life to philanthropy. He witnessed his wife Marvelle’s battle with breast cancer and especially her treatment at New York’s Evelyn Lauder Breast Centre. The couple decided Canada needed a similar centre, so they founded the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre in Toronto in the mid 1990s. Koffler’s philanthropy was instrumental in the creation of the University of Toronto’s Koffler Institute of Pharmacy, as well as the school’s Koffler Student Centre Koffler is survived by his wife and children.
