In the late 1920s, Canadian Pacific was feeling besieged by the government-owned Canadian National, which had declared itself to be “the people’s railway.” Canadian Pacific responded that its trains, steamships, hotels, and telegraph made it “pre-eminently the expression of a nation’s character.” It placed this little brag on a series of booklets and menus, one of which we’ve seen before on a dining car menu that featured the Empress Hotel on the cover.
Click image to download a 12.7-MB PDF of this booklet.
Above is a 16-page booklet describing the Chateau Lake Louise in detail. While this one is from my collection, the Chung collection has similar booklets for the Royal York, Empress, Royal Alexandra, Banff Springs hotels, and the Hotel Vancouver. These booklets weren’t all dated, but judging from references in the texts, they were issued between 1928 and 1930.
Each of the booklets devote several pages to detailed floor plans of the hotels in question, something people really don’t need until they arrive. In addition, they all have an elaborately embossed tissue paper between the cover and contents. One page of the tissue paper advertises the Empress of Britain, which CP ordered in 1928 and would go into Atlantic service in 1931.
This “expression” theme is continued on a page near the end of the booklet that lists CP agents. In addition to the “World’s Greatest Travel System” slogan, the page describes CP as “Canada’s National Enterprise” and adds, “Founded 1880: Then as now a Canadian institution.” Clearly, the railway was feeling somewhat defensive, which was probably increased by the Depression.