"The arrival of the GTP signaled a crucial moment for the opening up and subsequent development of the northern interior," said UNBC history professor Jonathan Swainger. " Not only did it provide a vital link to outside markets, it established a string of nonnative settlements that, in many ways determined the future population profile for the region. Although the railway may not have fulfilled all the hopeful expectations of its champions, there is little doubt that it opened a new era of economic development and expansion that profoundly shaped northern British Columbia and its resource extractive identity until well after the Second World War."