“Snug harbors and fishing boats almost outnumber the totem poles in Alaska,” says the back of this menu. Actually, I’m pretty sure that fishing boats greatly outnumber totem poles. The front cover photos also shows evidence of a logging industry: the industry in the background is identifiable as a sawmill by the large wigwam burner on the left. Today, wigwam burners have disappeared, both to reduce air pollution and because no one wants to waste potential wood products by burning them in pointless fires.

Click image to download a 663-KB PDF of this menu.

This menu is dated July 1, which is Dominion Day in Canada (renamed Canada Day in 1982), the day Canada first became a nation in 1867. The menu celebrates with Canadian and British flags on page 2. Page 2 also has an excerpt from the Robert Service poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee, which doesn’t really seem an appropriate for Canada Day.

According to the timetable presented here yesterday, this menu is from a cruise that left Vancouver on June 29. The Prince George didn’t make any stops on June 30, but July 1, the day of this menu, it was scheduled to stop in Prince Rupert from 6:45 am to 11:00 am and then Ketchikan from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm. The long layovers gave passengers brief taste of life in these towns (and the tourist shops), but in Ketchikan in particular that must have been pretty brief unless people were willing to skip dinner on aboard the ship.

Judging from the menu, the meal doesn’t look like it was worth skipping. The seven-course dinner — or is it eight course? — includes filet of Dover sole, New York steak, and baked Alaska, among other selections. The baked Alaska is one of six dessert offerings, but dessert was apparently followed by two more courses: a cheese plate and fresh fruit with crystallized ginger.