Gerhard Ens (January 9, 1864 O.S. ">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="ecember 28, 1863 Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. – January 2, 1952) was a Ukrainian-born farmer, immigration agent and political figure in Saskatchewan. He represented Batoche (former electoral district), Batoche from 1905 to 1908 and Rosthern (provincial electoral district), Rosthern from 1908 to 1913 in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan as a Saskatchewan Liberal Party, Liberal. He was born in Neuendorf,

Chortitza Colony Chortitza Colony was a ''volost'', a subdivision of Yekaterinoslav uezd within Yekaterinoslav Governorate in the Russian Empire, now in Ukraine. During the reign of Catherine the Great, the area was annexed by Russia after the liquidation of t ...

, the son of Kornelius G. Ens and Barbara Giesbrecht. In 1883, Ens married Anna Dyck. He came to Canada with his family in 1891. Ens is considered by many to be the founder of

Rosthern, Saskatchewan Rosthern is a town at the juncture of Highway 11 and Highway 312 in central Saskatchewan, Canada. It is roughly halfway between the cities of Prince Albert and Saskatoon. History Mennonite settlers, led by Gerhard Ens, began arriving in ...

. After the death of his first wife, he married Maria (Epp) Penner in 1936. Ens promoted

Mennonite Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...

immigration to Canada from Russia and the United States. He was also president of the Rosthern Realty Company. Ens served as government

whip A whip is a blunt weapon or implement used in a striking motion to create sound or pain. Whips can be used for flagellation against humans or animals to exert control through pain compliance or fear of pain, or be used as an audible cue thro ...

in the assembly. He resigned his seat in the assembly in 1913 when he was named Inspector of

Public Institutions In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

. He died in Rosthern.

References

Saskatchewan Liberal Party MLAs 1864 births 1952 deaths People from Zaporizhzhia Canadian Mennonites Ukrainian emigrants to Canada Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Canada 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan {{Liberal-Saskatchewan-MLA-stub