photo caption: 
Lower Mainland cranberry king Peter Dhillon.  Photo: Patricia Fraser/Sauder Communication

By Leah Bjornson,
Special to The Post

Lower Mainland cranberry king Peter Dhillon has partnered with the University of British Columbia to establish the $7.5 million Centre for Business Ethics at the Sauder School of Business.
The Centre will be called the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics. It will support the study, teaching, and promotion of values-driven business practices in both a local and international context, according to UBC.
The Centre is first of its kind at a Canadian business school to approach the study, teaching and promotion of business ethics in a comprehensive program. Its research will focus on best practices in business disciplines such as marketing, human resources, finance, and accounting.
“There is an impression that you can’t do well in business unless you set ethics aside,” said Dhillon. “I want to break that image. You can be caring, you can be thoughtful, and still be successful.”
This donation follows Dhillon’s family’s gift of $2 million to the university in 2006 in memory of his father, Rashpal Dhillon. The money went towards the establishment of the Rashpal Dhillon Pulmonary Fibrosis Research Endowment and the Rashpal Dhillon Track and Field Centre.
As the current CEO of the Richberry Group of Companies and chairman of Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., Dhillon is giving back back to his alma mater, where he graduated from with a bachelor of arts degree in history.
Although he initially had his sights set on a career in law, he ultimately opted to enter into the family business with his father.
An entrepreneur himself, Peter Dhillon’s father, Rashpal Dhillon, served as BC’s first ever Sikh RCMP officer for 24 years after emigrating from the Punjab region of India.
He later served as a corrections officer and deputy sheriff in the Lower Mainland before investing his money into cranberries in 1970.
Although his father was not a farmer himself, Peter Dhillon told Edible Communities that his father “had agriculture in his blood.” Upon his passing, Rashpal left his son Peter with cranberry farms stretching across more than 320 hectares in Richmond and Pitt Meadows.
Since involving himself with his father’s business 22 years ago, Dhillon has become Canada’s largest grower of cranberries, owning thousands of acres of farmland in Quebec and BC.