Born and raised in St. Catharines, Peter started with RBC Dominion Securities as an Investment Advisor in the summer of 1998. Previously, Peter received his Honours Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Guelph. Peter has both his Securities license and his Insurance license, has completed the CIM (Chartered Investment Manager), the CFP (Certified Financial Planner), has been awarded the FCSI (Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute) designation, and has also been awarded the Portfolio Manager (PM) designation by The Investment Dealers Association. The PM designation is recognized as one of the uppermost qualifications within the investment industry, allowing Peter to offer a higher level of service to clients through discretionary money management (RBC’s PIM program). Peter is also a Vice President of the firm.
Peter is happily married to Poppy Gilliam and is very supportive of her career (an elementary school principal within the District School Board of Niagara). Peter and Poppy have two boys. Chase was born in April 2009 and Daxx was born in February 2011. The boys keep them very busy with a number of activities including travel hockey, travel soccer, golf and any other sport that they can convince their parents to let them play. Aside from playing sports the family also enjoys attending concerts at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, traveling, cheering on the Niagara Ice Dogs and spending lots of time up north at the family cottage in the summer.
Away from work, Peter is a big believer in giving back to the community. He is following the lead of his parents and prior generations of his family. For the past 11 years Peter has been very active with United Way Niagara. He was Chair of the Board of Directors from April 2016 until June 2018 of the United Way of St. Catharines & District and saw the organization through the successful amalgamation of the 3 United Ways in Niagara. He was the inaugural chair of United Way Niagara and remains in that position today. Peter also has chaired Major Giving for the annual United Way Campaign since 2011, he has been on the Campaign Cabinet since 2009 and he and Poppy are former co-chairs of Leadership Giving. Peter also sits on the Board of the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. This city-owned asset has a separate governance board and Peter was excited to be elected to the inaugural board. Peter is also the Chair of the St. Catharines Community Fund, part of the Niagara Community Foundation, which raises permanently endowed funds to benefit citizens of St. Catharines. When Peter and Poppy got married in 2005, they established the Partridge Gilliam Family Fund through the Niagara Community Foundation. This fund benefits various local children’s charities as selected by Peter and Poppy each year. He was the Co-Chair, with the Mayor, from 2016 – 2018 for the Annual Mayor’s Au Marche that took place in August each summer (from 2004 – 2018). The event raised over $500,000 for the Niagara Community Foundation’s Investing in Youth Fund which provided opportunities for over 3,000 youth. These children received financial assistance in order to participate in sports, recreation or cultural programs in St. Catharines. Peter also chairs the St. Catharines Sports Hall of Fame, he sits on the committee for the St. Catharines Athlete and Sportsperson of the Year and he was on the committee that successfully landed the 2021 Canada Summer Games for Niagara. Peter was also a volunteer high school football coach at his alma mater, Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School from 1999 – 2013. The team had a lot of success and many players went on to play football at university. He helped raise $100,000 for the Bulldog Football Alumni Association in running their annual golf tournament and in 2009 he was instrumental in organizing the purchase of a state-of-the-art wireless scoreboard at Sir Winston for the field. Peter was active helping establish a major endowment fund for the University of Guelph Football Program, he has funded one annual scholarship for an incoming or in-course member of the Gryphon Football team and he sits on the Gryphon Football Cabinet.
