Vilma and Helen Hruska, two sisters from a family of eight children, shared a house in North Bergen, New Jersey, in 1954. Vilma was a school teacher and had the summers off. Helen worked as a dental assistant and was an avid traveler. So they took a trip to Europe on the Empress of Scotland, departing Montreal on June 29.

Click image to download a 6.7-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

I’ve previously posted eight menus that Helen Hruska collected from this trip, plus three menus from her return trip. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting more menus and other memorabilia from those trips, starting with this passenger list from the voyage to Britain.

Passengers made reservations for ocean crossings long enough in advance that the ship companies were able to make and distribute passenger lists to all of the people on board each voyage. The actual list of first-class and tourist-class passengers fills only six pages of this 28-page booklet. The rest was devoted to information welcoming passengers aboard the ship and advising them about ship-board activities and what to do when leaving.

The journey from Montreal to Liverpool took about eight days, and considering the time required to clean and re-provision the ships at each port, one ship could make a round-trip every three weeks. In addition to the Empress of Scotland, Canadian Pacific had the Empress of France and Empress of Australia on this route, allowing one departure a week. A painting of the Empress of Scotland is on page 2 and a schedule of sailings in on page 4.

A close look at the passenger list indicates that there were 626 passengers on board, which was 94 percent of the ship’s capacity. Of these, 361 were from Canada, 176 from the United States, 61 from England, 20 from Scotland, 6 from Australia, and one each from Ireland and Northern Ireland. Passengers came from most Canadian provinces and many U.S. states, including quite a few from Oklahoma and Texas. As an Oregonian, I was interested to note two were from Seaside and one was from Corvallis.