Each time Grace Dove appears on the screen as Leonardo diCaprio's wife in the new film, The Revenant, which opened Friday at the local movie theatre, there will certainly be a buzz in the audience.
Dove is one of our own.
She grew up in Salmon Valley. Her first acting role was as Santa in an elementary school class Christmas concert.
She graduated from Kelly Road Secondary in 2009.
Local TV viewers got to know Dove on a CKPG show called Splatterday. Once she got her driver's licence, CKPG hired her to be the station's "Funchaser," the youngest community correspondent in their long history.
She's now the female lead in a critically-acclaimed film with one of Hollywood's leading men. The Revenant's writer and director, Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, won Oscars last year for best director and best original screenplay for Birdman, which also won the Academy Award for best picture.
Congratulations to then station manager Ken Kilcullen and his team for backing Dove with a bursary to attend the Vancouver Film School. Their investment in her has certainly paid off.
There were more local people instrumental in Dove's development - her parents and her two brothers, the Barber family, teachers Lisa Davison and Audrey Rowell at Kelly Road and other teachers at Heather Park and Salmon Valley.
She visited many of them when she came home to Prince George for a few days over the Christmas break, fresh off her red-carpet appearance at The Revenant's Hollywood premiere. CKPG broadcast a great piece of her triumphant return to visit her friends at the station and she cheerfully Tweeted "Landed my first front page... Thank you @pgcitizen and my hometown!" with a picture of the Citizen's New Year's Eve edition, led by the Rising Star story about Dove by Frank Peebles.
Dove is the latest in a long line of individuals blessed with talent and great local mentorship who have gone on to amazing success. Two others, Eric Brewer and Jeff Zorn, are in Prince George to receive alumni awards from the Cougars before tonight's game against the Victoria Royals.
Brewer needs little introduction to Prince George fans. Olympic gold medal winner, World Cup of Hockey winner, three-time world championship winner, 1,009 regular season NHL games played. Now he's a partner in EDGEPRO Sports and Entertainment, the group that bought the Cougars in March 2014.
His roots remain in Prince George. The Cougars are the only junior hockey team he played for before moving on to the big leagues. His wife Rebecca is from Prince George.
While Zorn didn't make it to the NHL, he is beloved among Cougars fans. He played in Prince George for three seasons before suffering a broken vertebrae in his 19-year-old season. He impressed everyone with his courageous comeback nine months later. When he returned to Prince George a week after being traded to the Saskatoon Blades, he was welcomed with a standing ovation from the standing-room only crowd.
After his junior career, he played for the University of Alberta Golden Bears, thanks to his WHL scholarship, where he was a four-time CIS Academic All-Canadian, as part of his journey to graduating from medical school in 2009. He is now a urologist on Vancouver Island.
Dove, Brewer and Zorn would all attest that their success was not handed to them. They worked - and continue to work - hard to make the most out of their lives, even Brewer, as he makes the transition from full-time professional hockey player to full-time parent.
Whatever is in store for them next, the Prince George residents who played a role, large or small, in their development can take special pride. Best of all, Zorn, Brewer and Dove are now inspiring examples themselves for a new generation of local children, with their own dreams of becoming a doctor and saving lives, playing in the NHL and winning an Olympic gold medal or starring in a Hollywood movie that comes to the local movie theatre.
They are proof that dreams, with a little luck and a ton of effort, really do come true.
