In October 1957, BC Premier W. A. C. Bennett called a press conference to deliver the “most momentous announcement” of his life. The Peace River, he said with excitement, would be dammed. Bennett was a populist, a regionalist, and a promoter of BC's resource wealth. After an early career as a hardware store owner in a small interior town, he had risen through provincial politics to lead the province under a new right-of-center party, Social Credit, beginning in 1952. One of his earliest and most enduring goals was to use the provincial state to open the Interior and North to development. His government invested heavily in infrastructure projects to overcome the barriers of distance. He made overtures to international capital to develop the province's natural resource wealth. By the mid-1950s, in a period of buoyant economic growth, some of those efforts began to bear fruit. The Wenner-Gren corporation, representing the interests of Axel Wenner-Gren, a Swedish multimillionaire and notorious World War II arms dealer, applied to develop BC's Peace River region. The corporation's plans were ambitious. They included a railroad along the Rocky Mountain trench, pulp and paper and mining developments, as well as an enormous hydroelectric project on the Peace River. As surveys proceeded, hydroelectricity gained priority. Bennett extolled the possibilities. Cheap power would attract industry. Northern electricity would supply the province's needs well into the future. The Wenner-Gren project would help to fulfill the dream of connecting distant northern resources to the provincial heartland.