Abe Gomel

FUNERAL SERVICE: Sunday, June 28, 2026 at 12:00 PM at Arlington Memorial Park.

LIVESTREAM: To attend the funeral service via livestream, please contact the family.

OBITUARY:

Abe Gomel died peacefully in Atlanta, Georgia, at age 81, surrounded by his family. Abe loved his family fiercely and his family adored him beyond. He is already so very missed by his beloved wife Rachel (née de Ciaves), his children and their spouses Rona and Neil, Richard and Tracy, and David and Sarah, and his grandchildren Sarah, Neil, Aidan, Yasmine, Naomi, Olivia, and Alexandra. He is predeceased by his parents, Reşat and Renée Gomel, and his sister Mazal whom he loved dearly.

Family came first for Abe, and it shaped everything he did. He was a steward of his ancestral values, commitments, and history, and he passed these down as a strong foundation for his children and grandchildren. Every single member of Abe’s family was sure of his deep and unwavering love.

Abe was a visionary entrepreneur who believed that business should be a vehicle for cultural, scientific, and intellectual advancement. In 1978, he acquired a small Montreal dairy manufacturer that had served the local Jewish community for decades. While he preserved the company’s legacy of making products that fueled the Jewish community (including the cream cheese that accompanied Montreal’s famous bagels), he transformed the small business into Liberté, a thriving North American leader in organic and probiotic products. Always researching and innovating, he introduced new products that always had the wellbeing of consumers in mind, including the first yogourt to include probiotics, kefir, and new exotic flavors, changing the landscape of the dairy business.

Liberté was an expression of Abe’s creative vision and values. He partnered with young Montreal artists and trail-blazing architects to transform the industrial spaces of his factories into places of beauty and creativity. He believed that art gives meaning to our lives and energizes the viewer, so art adorned all Liberté walls and changed quarterly, inspiring an open exchange of ideas amongst the Liberté community. Abe was an early and passionate supporter of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and he was proud to serve on its board. Abe also loved music, especially jazz, which he blasted from the speakers of his ancient Honda Civic as he drove with the windows down. His passion for jazz led him to become one of the inaugural supporters of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. The Liberté Tent held thousands of children learning about jazz.  

He turned his big ideas into action by organizing international symposia on space exploration, symbiosis, probiotics and architecture, believing that the personal, social, and professional could be one and the same. He funded and supported pioneering evolutionary biology research, enabling groundbreaking advancements in the study of cell evolution and symbiosis. He was excited by the possibilities opened up by space exploration and believed that one did not have to be a scientist to be involved in the space exploration adventure, and that education was where that journey began. He was a member of the Planetary Society’s New Millennium Committee and worked towards creating a space architecture focus at McGill University. From outreach in Montreal to educational tokens on his yogourt containers, he fostered curiosity for space in students of all ages.

Abe was born in Izmir, Turkey, and remained actively involved in his family business there throughout his life. He cherished his parents’ and ancestors’ place in the Izmir Jewish community and made significant contributions to the Montreal Jewish community, serving as President of the Golden Age Association at the Cummings Jewish Centre for Seniors.

Abe shared his excitement with those he loved. He was always positive, and no one in our family can ever recall him saying a negative word about another person. He possessed tireless energy, he approached life with seriousness and purpose, and he lived by a simple code: do good to others. A lifelong learner, he earned a MSc in Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, an MBA at Cornell University, and, in his 60s, an MA in Philosophy of Architecture at McGill University. Despite the many achievements we have freely shared here, Abe’s dominating trait was his humility, and he would have vetoed this obituary instantly. Very few people knew the extent of his accomplishments because he believed that anonymously, one could be more free to explore and create. 

Most of all, Abe loved his Rachel. They fell in love in Izmir, Turkey, when he was 13 and she was 12 and had a love that remained true and enduring until the very end. 

Funeral services will be held on Sunday, June 28, 2026 at noon at Arlington Memorial Park in Atlanta, Georgia. A link to a livestream will be made available. A reception will follow immediately after. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Respite Care of Atlanta or Cummings Centre Foundation in Montreal.