Gil I. Cornblum was a young corporate lawyer, and in the afternoon of October 23, 2007, he was at the peak of professional success. Gil had spent almost two decades climbing the legal ladder — earning a combined law-mba degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1994, then passing the bar exams, then moving to Manhattan to serve at the giant Wall Street firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, then coming home to run the Toronto office of another huge U.S.-based law firm, Dorsey & Whitney. Gil was now 37. Around five foot five in height. Of Romanian descent, he had been born in the Israeli town of Ashkelon. His family had brought him to Canada as a young boy. Gil had thick, brown hair, which he wore parted on the right side. He had a naturally round face and was at this time slightly pudgy. His eyeglasses had large, round lenses that gave him a slightly owl-like appearance. He had thick eyebrows; big, sensitive-looking brown eyes; ears that stuck out. Gil smiled often but rarely openly enough to show his teeth. A friend from his days at Sullivan & Cromwell would later describe Gil as a “sweet soul,” adding that he had been the only lawyer at that high-pressure megafirm who “didn’t seem to have an axe to grind. He was nice to me — and that meant a lot. It was unusual.”