Cover: Mick Coulas

It was a strategy born of sheer frustration, a chess move that failed. On Nov. 28, 2006, Michael Morris, a Canadian who runs a small offshore bank in the Bahamas, arrived at a bustling Starbucks in downtown Toronto expecting to meet a woman called Ginette Brown. The previous month, a woman by this name had called Morris at his offices in Nassau, where he runs Barrington Bank International Ltd., and told him she had a client seeking financing and would Morris agree to meet with her when he was next in Toronto? Weeks later, they arranged to rendezvous at the Starbucks while he was in town visiting family.

Sometime prior to 7 a.m. on Oct. 26, 2009, a man stood on a road bridge overlooking the Don Valley in east-end downtown Toronto. Apparently wracked with despair and shame, he climbed up and over and leapt into oblivion. The 39-year-old lawyer died in the gravel down below, leaving a slew of unanswered questions in his wake.

There seems to be a general consensus that Canadian securities regulators, particularly in Ontario, have a shoddy record of prosecuting corporate fraud. Are lawyers to blame for this state of affairs?

He was ambitious and well connected, generous and popular, but booze and pills led to a downward spiral resulting in a guilty plea stemming from an RCMP money-laundering sting.

He comes across as mild-mannered, but sports lawyer Gord Kirke is tough when it counts – when tempers flare, Kirke is famous for bringing sanity and a much-needed sense of fair play to the multi-billion-dollar sports industry.