Allan Offman, shown with his wife, Lesley, created Artco Contract Furnishings, a successful division of the family’s retail store The Art Shoppe, which outfitted some of the world’s finest hotels.Tom Sandler/The Globe and Mail
Allan Offman was, to borrow Mary McCarthy's crisp phrase, the man in the Brooks Brothers shirt: a dapper, distinguished businessman, heir to an iconic Toronto furniture emporium and a pillar of the city's Jewish community.
He was also, to quote the adjective favoured by his family and friends, endearingly zany.
This was the alumnus of Ohio State University, class of 1961, who remained an eternal frat boy; the lover of scatological humour whose spiritual brothers were the rowdy pranksters of that classic comedy Animal House.
In matters of the heart, he was, as his second wife, Lesley, wryly described him, "a curable romantic" who, on their first date, didn't like the meal he'd ordered and ate hers instead. In the role of venerable patriarch, he drew crazy cartoons to amuse his kids and grandkids, or would sit in a posh restaurant, a napkin perched on his head, to see if he could make them crack up.
"Just talking about him puts a smile on my face," said lawyer Skip Sigel, one of Mr. Offman's oldest and closest friends.
"He didn't make small talk," added Rosalie Sharp, who served with Mr. Offman on the governing board of the Ontario College of Art (now called OCAD University). "If you came up to him at a party, he would always say something funny, ironic, sardonic – something off-the-wall."
Mr. Offman, who died of cancer at the age of 79 on May 24 at his home in Toronto, was an irrepressible joker; but his zaniness was the froth on top of a very shrewd, extremely well-read and deeply committed man. The shrewdness emerged in business, where he created Artco Contract Furnishings, a successful adjunct of his father's retail store The Art Shoppe, which outfitted some of the world's finest hotels. The commitment was evident in his philanthropy, most especially his lifelong devotion to Jewish causes and unflagging support for the state of Israel. He visited the country countless times and met with many of its major figures, from Moshe Dayan to Ariel Sharon.
Even there, however, Mr. Offman couldn't contain his natural levity. Another close friend, fellow philanthropist Gerald Sheff, recalled him doing a mean impersonation of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "He may even have done it to Rabin's face," Mr. Sheff said. "He always brought a lot of laughs to anything he did."
Born May 15, 1938, in Toronto, Allan Edward Offman was the second of two sons of Leon and Rita Offman, Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, respectively. Just two years before Allan's birth, Leon, an upholsterer, had opened a little shop on Yonge Street near Eglinton Avenue. He soon began importing luxury brands and before long The Art Shoppe had established itself as Toronto's classiest furniture store, eventually expanding to front an entire city block.
Leon Offman was by all accounts a larger-than-life figure, belonging to the community of dynamic Jewish immigrants in early-20th-century Toronto who built their fortunes from scratch. The city's WASP establishment didn't always welcome them. Allan got his first taste of anti-Semitism as a kid growing up in the north Toronto neighbourhood of Forest Hill, well before it became a Jewish enclave. "I would occasionally be singled out for no apparent reason for an altercation," he recalled in a memoir written for the Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto. "Your good friends would strangely turn on you temporarily on learning that you were Jewish."
After high school, Allan enrolled at Ohio State University, where he ostensibly studied business but seems to have poured most of his energy into extracurricular hijinks. As social chairman of his fraternity, Allan was, in his son Craig's words, "the ultimate prankster and troublemaker, in a very sly way. At one point, he and some of his frat buddies created a fake student and almost got him graduated. I think their plot was foiled at the last minute."
Those were Mr. Offman's halcyon days, to be immortalized ever after in tales told at parties and around the dinner table.
In Ohio, he also met his first wife, the former Adrienne Manes. They married in 1962 and settled in Toronto, where he went to work in the family business. His older brother, Martin, was already more established in the business, so Allan set about carving his own niche by creating the Artco division. One of his first customers was the fledgling Four Seasons chain. That led to a slew of international contracts with Fairmont, Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, Westin and many other high-end hotels. Artco also furnished corporate headquarters for the likes of Bacardi and General Motors, as well as what would become Toronto Pearson International Airport.
Even as he was finding his feet in business, Mr. Offman was already active in local Jewish organizations and fundraising for Israel. He was especially drawn to the United Jewish Appeal and chaired its Toronto campaign for three terms. He also served as president of the Jewish Federations of Canada – now the United Israel Appeal.
Craig said he believed his father's dedication to Israel grew out of his experiences of anti-Semitism. "I think he realized, growing up, the value of this country that would show that Jews were resourceful and could defend themselves, and that counteracted the pernicious stereotypes that existed at the time."
Mr. Offman was greatly admired for his commitment. "I got involved with him because of that," Four Seasons founder Isadore Sharp said. "We were all able to give financially, but he gave so much more – he devoted his time unselfishly."
At home, Mr. Offman was building a family. Daughter Jill was born in 1963, followed by Craig in 1967. Craig said his father had hoped his children would go into traditional professions, such as medicine or law. They both confounded him by choosing media instead. Jill is now a television executive with Viacom, based in London, England, while Craig is an editor at The Globe and Mail. "He was really puzzled by our choices, at first," Craig said. "But he was accepting and, while always slightly skeptical, would be really supportive of us."
Given Allan's sense of humour, it was only fitting that Jill – who is married to Daniel Richler, son of legendary satirist Mordecai Richler – should be managing director of Comedy Central in Britain.
Jill said her dad had the natural instincts of a comedian: "He knew something that it took me 10 years in comedy to learn, that the best jokes bear repeating."
Allan also had a creative streak that manifested itself in the stylish ads and eye-catching window displays of The Art Shoppe. "He was more artistically attuned than the average frat boy of his generation," Jill said.
"He had a deep aesthetic appreciation of art and architecture." Then there were those cartoons. He sent them, in lieu of letters, to his kids at summer camp. "They were usually mocking various members of the family," Craig recalled. "They were really good and often quite withering." Later, for his five grandchildren, he created a character called Super Granny, a bumbling superhero that paid quirky homage to his own mother, Rita.
Allan's first marriage ended in the 1980s. In 1992, he began dating Lesley Binstock. Despite the fact that he was 11 years older and she was a widow with three children – not to mention that he brought her, in her words, "awful convenience-store flowers" for their first date – the pair hit it off instantly.
"Allan always used the word 'seamless,'" Lesley said. "It just felt so right." The two were married in 1994; they celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary last October.
Mr. Offman sold Artco in 2010, but continued working at The Art Shoppe, which relocated to the Castlefield Design District in 2014, shortly before the death of his brother, Martin. The store is now run by Martin's three daughters.
In the fall of 2015, Allan was diagnosed with gall-bladder cancer, which he resisted right to the end. He was still going into the office two weeks before he died and never stopped looking for a laugh. "Even in the ICU," his daughter said, "he was still putting napkins on his head."
Allan leaves his wife, Lesley; his children, Jill and Craig; their spouses, Mr. Richler and Randi Rose; his stepchildren, Lowell, Ryan and Jared Binstock; and his grandchildren, Poppy, Eli, Noa, Lila and Matea.
Like the word "zany," another word, "mensch" – a Yiddish compliment meaning an upstanding and admirable human being – comes up again and again in descriptions of Allan. "He was a very special man," Mr. Sheff summed up. "I don't use this term loosely when it comes to other men, but I loved Allan. He was a guy you found easy to love."
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