A few days ago we had a menu with a black-and-white photo of horseback riders in Assiniboine Provincial Park. Today we have a color photo of skiers in the same park. The previous menu was probably from before 1935, meaning before Kodachrome film was introduced. This one is from 1949, by which time Canadian Pacific had fully embraced color photos in its advertising. In fact, I wonder if the solid colors it briefly used on its menu covers — yellow, cyan, magenta, blue, green, and grey — were meant to celebrate or enhance the use of color photos.

Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.

This particular menu is one we haven’t seen before. The back cover encourages people to visit Assiniboine, Lake Louise, and Banff either as summer resorts or as ski areas. It doesn’t say so, but apparently the first ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies was not in Banff but in Assiniboine Provincial Park.

The dinner menu inside was used on the Dominion in August, 1949. It has table d’hôte meals on the left for $2 — about US$19 today — featuring roast chicken, bacon and eggs, mushroom omelet, or a cold meat platter. The a la carte side also had three kinds of fish. Steaks and chops were missing from both sides, which seems strange as wartime rationing should have been long over by then.