From the late 1930s to the late 1940s, the contexts driving hydroelectric development in BC changed markedly. In the late 1930s, small systems had existed in resource towns associated with primary industry. In the cities, relatively modest utilities had faced the challenges of the Depression by reining in system expansion and consolidating existing markets. A decade later, the tumult of a world war had transformed the provincial political economy. BC had experienced an intensification of resource and industrial development, the population had grown, and new connections tied the province into a wider continental economy. As part of these changes, the provincial government had entered the water-development and rural electrification business, private utilities had forged ahead with building plans, and politicians and pundits had begun to look to the northern interior to expand the provincial resource economy.

The politics of this resource development agenda were both local and international in emphasis. Small communities desired electrical power for domestic needs and industrial development; surveyors scrutinized small rivers to meet the needs of outlying settlements; electricity linked sections of the province and tied together metropolis and hinterland in new ways. Yet all of these local concerns were reflective of British Columbians' desire to catch up with other regions, to modernize and to mimic power development elsewhere. Local development was tied to the drive to expand the province's reach in the international commodity markets. Hydroelectricity was increasingly seen as a magnet to draw international capital investment.