There are certain people or places that can have a profound impact on your life, personally and professionally.

Prince George and its people is one of those places for Dan Hamhuis.

The Vancouver Canucks defenceman wouldn’t be where he is now without the significant contribution of the northern B.C. community where Hamhuis and his Vancouver Canucks teammates begin training camp today.

Hamhuis could not be more proud to bring his teammates back to his old junior hockey stomping grounds.

He played four years with the Prince George Cougars, leaving his Smithers home at age 15 to join the Western Hockey League team. He joked Thursday that he was excited about the move, his mom not so much.

“When you are that young I don’t think you think things through that much,” Hamhuis said at Rogers Arena before the team headed north. “I think I was excited. Looking back it is kind of hard to believe what I did.”

Hamhuis not only survived in Prince George as a young man, he thrived and eventually became a first-round draft pick.

He said he had so much help along the way from billets, fans, former teammates and his parents, Marty and Ida, who in his first year made it to every home game. It should be noted that the drive from Smithers to Prince George is about 3½ or four hours. Each way.

“They were driving through the night and everything,” Hamhuis said. “I think I was quite fortunate to have a great group of older guys on the team who took care of you and showed you the ropes and of course the community and the billets also look out for you.”

But Prince George is about much more than hockey for Hamhuis, who is now part-owner of the Cougars. He met his wife Sarah in his first year in Prince George.

“She was in the same high school as I was and I think alphabetically our two last names fell together so we were in the same homeroom class,” Hamhuis said.

“That is the neat thing for me about Prince George, it was a great junior experience there and personally, too, I met my wife there. We got married in Prince George a couple of years after I was done junior hockey there and then we had our first child in Prince George. I think we have gone back every summer since playing there to participate in a charity golf tournament or some kind of fundraising event in the city. We have been able to keep relationships alive.”

Hamhuis’s decision last year to join former Prince George teammate Eric Brewer in becoming part-owner of the Cougars was about Hamhuis wanting to give back and stay connected to the city.

“It has been a great thing to be involved in and another reason to come back to Prince George,” he said. “I really wanted to see the team be successful and be a team the city can be really proud of and that was a lot of the motivation to be part of the ownership group and have a say in that. It was a good year, it was a lot of work turning things around.”