Before she died, Beverley Winter left instructions that her children not be adopted by any relatives. Her brother, Wayne Rockcliffe, still wonders why she didn’t choose him and his wife. At that time they had no children. They were willing to move into the Winter home and send the boys to Upper Canada College. But Beverley, a convert to Judaism, wanted her sons to be raised as Jews. Rockcliffe thinks that his sister “just didn’t want us to have what was hers. What a shame that was!” Beverley’s rabbi found a home for the boys with Martin Barkin, a highly regarded urologist, and his wife, Carol, a schoolteacher.
By 1973, the year Sherman sold Empire, Kerry, then 12 years old, and his closest brother, 11-year-old Dana, were extremely un*happy. They found Barkin difficult and their adoptive mother cold. By age 15, Kerry had left home and moved into a rooming house. He continued to attend school, where he was arrested for selling hash and marijuana and sentenced to six months in the Mimico Correctional Centre. In what would become a recurring theme, a relative came to his rescue. Uncle Wayne used his connections to get Kerry accepted into Ottawa’s tony Ashbury College. He graduated and took honours English at Richmond College in London, England, with fees paid by the family trust.