Issued at least as early as 1956, a series of Canadian Pacific Empress dinner menus featured paintings of historic people with a historic architectural structure that was somehow associated with that person. Today’s menu shows the Pont du Gard, which is a part of a Roman aqueduct in southern France that is nearly 2,000 years old. The only association between the man in the picture, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, and the Pont du Gard is that he was born nearby.

Click image to download a 493-KB PDF of this menu.

As the cover text says, Montcalm’s claim to fame is that he led the French troops in the French and Indian War in Quebec, where he died in battle in 1759. He appeared in the classic book, Last of the Mohicans and was portrayed by Patrice Chéreau in the 1992 movie.

The Pont du Gard is one of the most impressive structures built by the Roman Empire outside of Rome itself, being the highest aqueduct the Romans ever built. The picture shows the structure’s top was uneven, indicating its dilapidated condition in the eighteenth century. It has been partly restored since then, as shown in the above photo that I took in 2002.

Today’s menu was used aboard the Empress of Britain on August 22, 1961. The ship had left Liverpool at 5:30 that afternoon on its way to Montreal, where it would arrive on August 29. Perhaps because it was the first night out, the menu isn’t as elaborate as the mid-voyage menu presented here yesterday, with fewer soups, entrées, desserts, and other selections.