Longtime business leader Kerry Hawkins dead at 76

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This article was published 05/09/2017 (3190 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Longtime Manitoba business leader and former Cargill Limited president and CEO Kerry Hawkins has died.

A spokesperson for Winnipeg-based Cargill Limited confirmed Tuesday Hawkins died on the weekend. He was 76.

A native of Calgary, Hawkins spent almost his entire working life with Cargill, having joined the company in 1964 as a grain trader and working his way up the ranks to president and CEO of its Canadian operations. He held that position from 1982 until his retirement in 2005. Cargill Limited is the Canadian subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Cargill Incorporated.

Hawkins was also a prominent player in the local business community for nearly three decades, serving as chairman of a host of local organizations. They included Winnipeg 2000, which was the precursor to Economic Development Winnipeg; the Business Council of Manitoba, of which he was a founding member; and CentrePort Canada Inc., where he served as its founding chairman.

Sandy Riley, another longtime local business leader, said Hawkins will be greatly missed.

“Kerry was, for me personally, a great friend whom I miss already,” Riley said in an email from Cambridge Bay, where he was attending a North West Company board meeting.

“He was one of Manitoba’s most influential business leaders and the Business Council would not have been possible without his leadership and strong endorsation. As our first Chairman he set the tone for those of us who followed him in that role and pulled us all together when it was needed,” Riley said.

“The renaissance that Winnipeg has experienced over the last 20 years is due in large part to the leadership he gave to the Business Community and the example of Community engagement which he set for all of us,” he added.

 

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca