Pioneer Energy: Supporting Communities across Ontario
Pioneer Energy has come a long way since founder Murray Hogarth opened his first gas station in Hamilton in 1956. The company’s values are to operate every day with integrity, live the entrepreneurial spirit, promote individual initiative, operate with mutual respect, strive to deliver exceptional customer service and be community minded.
Pioneer has followed these values from the beginning, successfully growing across Canada, and supporting each of the communities that have helped it grow. Since 1999, Pioneer has donated and pledged more than $5 million to Ontario organizations.
Click here to watch a video about the Hogarth family.
The company established a community foundation fund which contributes each year to the different communities in which it does business. The Burlington Foundation has received a share of these funds, which are distributed according to its own needs.
Although Pioneer recognizes and supports a wide range of community needs, its emphasis is on health and children. Pioneer Energy founded the Pioneer Petroleum Children’s Foundation, focusing on supporting local children’s hospitals, as well as other organizations such as the CHML Christmas Tree of Hope and United Way of Burlington and Greater Hamilton. Pioneer also started a Give What You Can campaign to support children’s hospitals in Ontario.
The Hogarth legacy of giving has had a longstanding connection with the Burlington Foundation, starting in 1998 when Murray Hogarth became one of the organization’s founders. When Murray was chair of the Hamilton Community Foundation (HCF), he realized that Burlington would benefit from having its own community foundation. He began the process of having HCF sponsor the creation of a new foundation and the Burlington Foundation was established in 1999.
The start of a new community foundation brought the opportunity to work with a new excellent board, with Doug Leggat as the first chair. Murray and his wife Diana had the honour of making the first contribution to fund the new Burlington Foundation and have continued to do so ever since. They were honoured by the Foundation as the 2013 Philanthropists of the Year.
Pioneer Energy and the Hogarth Family believe its success is intrinsically linked to the health of communities they serve and call home, which is why they are so dedicated to supporting these communities in any way they can. Murray once emphasized the importance of showing their appreciation to the communities which have made them successful.
“My family and I have always been passionate about supporting our community through Burlington Foundation, beginning with the very first donation,” Murray said. “It has been a pleasure to watch the remarkable progress that the Foundation has made since its inception and we are proud to be associated with the Foundation.”
With Murray’s passing in 2014 at the age of 84, his legacy of giving to support Burlington Foundation’s work continues to live on.
