This joint Canadian National/Canadian Pacific brochure advertises “really low summer fares” to seasides and resorts in eastern Canada. However, they don’t appear to be that low to me. The roundtrip fare from Toronto to St. Andrews, for example, is CAN$30.85, which in today’s money is US$459 (CAN$590). That doesn’t sound very affordable to me, especially if it is multiplied across a family. In general, multiply prices by about 15 to approximate today’s U.S. dollars and by 19 to get Canadian dollars.

Click image to download a 701-KB PDF of this brochure.

Canadian Pacific and Canadian National ran pool trains–meaning each railroad provided its own equipment on its own schedules but the two shared revenues and some costs–between Montreal and Toronto, and passengers on some of the trips contemplated by this brochure would ride those trains. However, a brochure like this, effectively turning a duopoly into a cartel, would probably be illegal in the United States. In Canada, they could get away with it because one of the railroads was owned by the government.