Queen’s University Archives

CA QUA08235
Person
n.d.

No information available on this creator.

CA QUA10001
Person
1922-2017

Ann Straus was born in New York City in 1922 and died in Montreal 2017. She studied economics at Vassar and Columbia. She married Maynard Gertler in 1948 with whom she had five sons.

Ann Gertler was an organizing member of Group of 78, Project Ploughshares, Voice of Women (VOW), Canadian Pugwash, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and a board member of International Peace Bureau. in addition to her roles within the organizations, Ann was also a UN accredited observer for VOW and Ploughshares. Her interest in teaching peace led to her role in the establishment of the Grindstone Island peace education centre. Gertler was also an advisor to the Canadian disarmament ambassador at the UN and a board member for Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security (CIIPS),

In addition to her roles for and with these organizations
Ann was also co-founder and Director of Harvest House Publishers from it’s founding, in 1960, to 1995.

Gertler, Emmanuel Maynard

CA QUA02710
Person
December 1, 1916-April 19, 2011

Maynard Gertler, born 1916, passed away in Montreal on April 19, 2011. Gertler studied Mental and Moral Philosophy at Queen’s University, completing graduate work in Economics at Columbia University, where he met his wife Ann Straus. Ann and Maynard married in 1943 and had five sons.
Maynard had several careers during his lifetime: he was the president of a documentary film company The World Today, in New York; he worked as an economist for the U.S government during the Second World War; he taught U.S. history at Cambridge; and he was a farmer most of his life. Maynard and Ann were owner-operators of farms in Little Washington, VA, Lancaster County, PA and Williamstown, Ontario. He was active in the Canadian Human Rights Foundation and was a former president of the Canadian Chapter of Amnesty International. Returning to Montreal from Cambridge in 1958, he founded Harvest House Publishers with Ann which ran for the next 40 years. He served as president of Amnesty International Canada, as vice-president of PEN Canada; and as a board member of the Raoul Wallenberg International Movement for Humanity. In 2002, his achievements were recognized with the Order of Canada (Canada's highest civilian honor) and the Queen's University Alumni Achievement Award.

Gertrude Buckman