publicist in concluding that the GTP experience demonstrated the presi-
dent's 'foresight, will, and ... ability.' ⁹ Though the GTP later came under
the scrutiny of the entrepreneurial school of business history, its presi-
dent still received the charity due a Great Man. In his financial study of
the parent Grand Trunk, A. W. Currie ties the folly of locating the GTP
Pacific terminus at Prince Rupert to Hays, but concludes that the presi-
dent's death represented an irreparable loss to the company. ¹⁰ Since they
gained access to an edited correspondence between Hays and Grand
Trunk president Sir Charles Rivers Wilson, academic historians have
come to view as less benign the GTP president's actions. ¹¹ But even
Canadian National official historian G. R. Stevens, perhaps the most stri-
dent critic of Hays's direction of the GTP, perpetuates the view of Hays as
a dark hero by dismissing his successors as mediocrities who lacked the
ability to save the company. ¹²

The second cause advanced for what one reviewer has called 'the
misfortune which overwhelmed the project' is the impact of the First World
War. Given 'a breathing space' to develop traffic on its new line, the GTP
might have secured enough revenue to pay both its operating expenses
and interest charges and thereby permitted the parent Grand Trunk to
'squeeze through.' But the war-induced 'inflationary ... spiral, sucking
prices ever upward,' destroyed the potential of the just-completed line to
pay its charges by building traffic. A recent popular study of the GTP
rehearses both these arguments to explain the company's collapse. ¹³

The lack of financial data concerning both the construction and the
short operation phases of the GTP explains in part the disinclination of his-
torians to investigate the construction and collapse of the GTP as a func-
tion of the evolution of a larger business cycle. They have also avoided
econometric estimates of the promoters' ex ante expectations of returns.

This study draws on the perspectives and insights of the econometric
studies of other railways to create estimates of costs and returns for the
GTP. While not ignoring the effect of Hays's demise or the impact of the
war, it contends that the transcontinental was probably never an economic
venture. It suggests, however, that the actions of Hays and other company
officers hastened the company's failure in British Columbia by increasing
its losses. At the senior level, management decisions concerning acquisi-
tion of the Pacific terminus, construction, and labour relations created in
large part the onerous financial obligations that brought on the com-
pany's collapse.

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