Niagara names among those chosen for Order of Canada
One hundred and fourteen appointments were announced for the Order of Canada Friday — and Niagara brought the wine and beer.
John Peller, president and chief executive officer for Andrew Peller Ltd. which operates Peller Estates Winery in Niagara-on-the-lake, was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Meanwhile, longtime TV comic Dave Thomas, one of the iconic beer-swigging Mckenzie Brothers of
SCTV fame and born in St. Catharines, was named a Member of the Order of Canada.
The honours are presented annually to note the “people whose service shapes our society,” the Governor General’s office said in announcing the appointments.
“It’s really an award that honours the efforts of a family as much as it does me,” said Peller. “To be recognized for your generational effort is definitely humbling.”
His grandfather, Andrew Peller, established Andres Wines in British Columbia in 1961. Within a few years it was expanding across Canada, entering Ontario in 1970.
It arrived in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1994 with the purchase of Hillebrand Estates Winery and in 2001 Peller Estates Winery was opened there.
A third-generation operator, John Peller succeeded his father, Joseph. Andres was officially renamed Andrew Peller Limited in 2006.
Peller, who also holds a law degree, said he never felt pressured to move into the family business.
“I think that’s how families should always approach family business, and that’s how we do it to this day,” he said.
“Not with a blind ambition that ‘this torch has to go forward,’ it’s with a view to making responsible decisions. First and foremost, our goal was always to have a great family.”
Peller, 63, joined the business in the late 1980s, around the time the Canada-u.s. free trade agreement was taking effect when “things weren’t looking particularly bright, to say the least, for our industry.”
Today the company has sales throughout much of the world with brands such as Peller Estates, Trius, Thirty Bench and Hillebrand.
“I love to share with people that the most important day of my life happened long before I was born,” he said — the day his grandfather Andrew came to Canada from Hungary, arriving in 1927 at Halifax.
Dave Thomas, 71, was born in St. Catharines in 1949, moved to the U.S. when he was still young and returned to Canada when he was 12, settling in Dundas, outside Hamilton.
He first caught the eye of Canadian TV watchers on SCTV.
His Mckenzie Brothers movie with Moranis, “Strange Brew,” is a cult classic. Thomas, who now lives in California, has been a prolific writer and director and was a regular on the TV show “Grace Under Fire” in the 1990s.
In announcing his appointment to the Order of Canada, Governor General Julie Payette noted Thomas’s “acclaimed body of comedic work as an actor, writer and producer over the past 45 years and as a mentor to the next generation.”