Profile

Born in Harare, Zimbabwe (then Salisbury, Rhodesia) in 1958, Mark Friedlander was the middle child of Bertie and Selma Friedlander, a pharmacist and homemaker respectively. As a young man, Mark attended medical school at the University of Cape Town. After graduating in 1981, he lived and worked in a number of cities including Cape Town; London, England; Saskatchewan; and New York. In 1987, he married an Englishwoman, Lesley Kane, and together they moved to Toronto so Mark could complete his specialty residency in anesthesia at the University of Toronto. It was during this residency that Mark and Lesley had two sons: Danny and Eli. Since 1992, Mark has worked as a staff anesthesiologist at North York General Hospital; he is also a part-time consultant at the Allevio Pain Management Clinic.

Mark and Lesley divorced in 2011. In 2015, Mark married Lila Speigel, who had immigrated to Toronto in the mid-1980s after living in Israel and, before that, Venezuela.

In addition to volunteering on numerous surgical missions to countries as diverse as Ecuador, Russia, and Vietnam, Mark has served as a chaperone and physician on the March of the Living and as host of the Sharon Jewish Day School Zimbabwe reunion. He is a member of Kehillat Shaaarei Torah since 1996. Mark’s son Danny is pursuing a medical career in the United States; his son Levi lives and works in Toronto. Mark’s sister Wendy and brother Gary and their families live in Toronto. Their father, Bertie, passed away in 2012 and their mother passed away in 2018.