We’ve previously seen booklets advertising Canadian Pacific’s chain of hotels from 1947, 1949, and 1957. This one is from 1937.
Click image to download a 4.7-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.
The postwar booklets all list the hotels in geographic order from east to west. This has the unfortunate result of including the company’s most thrilling facilities, Banff Springs and Lake Louise, in the back. The 1937 edition lists those two (and other Rocky Mountain resorts) first, and then goes west to east with the remaining lodges.
Most hotels get a full page, though Lake Louise gets two and the Empress three. Strangely, the Palliser Hotel in Calgary shares a page with the Harrison Hot Springs Hotel, which was located “seventy-five miles east of Vancouver,” meaning 630 miles west of Calgary.
Why was the Palliser subject to this indignity? I can’t even find any evidence that Harrison Hot Springs Hotel was owned or leased by Canadian Pacific. It isn’t included on Wikipedia’s list of former Canadian Pacific hotels. It isn’t mentioned with other hotels on the backs of Canadian Pacific menus from 1937 or for that matter 1936 or 1938.
The end of the listing for the Harrison Hot Springs Hotel says, “For literature and reservations—any Canadian Pacific Agent, or write the Manager of hotel.” Almost none of the other listings say this except for the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, which — the booklet says — was “operated by Lord Nelson Hotel Co.” Lord Nelson was owned by CP even if it wasn’t operated by CP Hotels, but it doesn’t appear that Harrison Hot Springs was owned or operated by CP.
The CPR’s September 1937 timetable lists hotels and lodges on page 42, with railway-owned facilities listed first, followed by 13 other facilities including Harrison Hot Springs Hotel, which was “Owned and operated by Harrison Hot Springs Hotel Co. Ltd.”
(Other listed places include such places as Hotel Sicamous, Lake O’Hara Lodge, and Mount Assiniboine Lodge–the latter “Two days horseback ride from Banff”!)
Harrison Hot Springs is a short ride by coach or taxi from Agassiz station on the CPR main line, but yes, it wasn’t a CPR facility…and it’s odd that it’s shoehorned in under “Calgary.”