Sherry Brydson

The biggest single stake in Woodbridge—the holding company that contains the Thomson Family’s tremendous wealth—is owned by Sherry Brydson, the only child of Irma Thomson, one of Roy Thomsons’s two daughters. Her 23% share in the company, along with her other business interests, puts her net worth at an estimated $6.6 billion. Canada’s richest woman was a political science and economics student at the University of Toronto in the 1960s. While there, she wrote for the school newspaper, The Varsity, and participated in the 1970 Abortion Caravan, in which hundreds of women trekked from British Columbia to Ottawa’s Parliament Hill to protest the country’s strict abortion laws. (Brydson was one of 30 women who chained themselves to the seats in the House of Commons in dissent.) When she left university, Brydson worked as a journalist in Australia and travelled to Thailand, where she became enamoured with Thai culture. In 1979, she purchased a derelict Toronto hotel and renovated it to open a women’s networking club. She later expanded the space to include a Thai restaurant and a spa, called the Elmwood. Both of which still exist today.