Toronto, from the Lakefront

Instead of the Canadian Rockies, this menu features a view of Toronto Union Station and the Royal York Hotel. “The Canadian Pacific Royal York Hotel is a social and commercial centre that dominates the downtown sky-line and overlooks Lake Ontario,” says the back of the menu.

Click image to download a 792-KB PDF of this menu.

That’s no longer true. As the Google maps photo below shows, the York looks pathetically small compared with the buildings around it. More skyscrapers now occupy whatever was in the spot from which the menu photo was taken.


Click image to see this in Google maps.

The menu is undated, but the prices match menus from 1949. The menu also doesn’t say what train it was printed for, but a code reads, “4-505–8,” which may mean it was used on train 505, which went from Montreal to Ottawa and carried both a parlor car and a diner.


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