Today’s Empress of England menus are all dated Friday, September 9, 1961. As with yesterday’s menus, we’ve seen the breakfast and lunch menu covers before but the dinner is new.

Click image to download a 260-KB PDF of this menu.

Today’s breakfast menu offered wholewheat griddle cakes. Based on the menus I’ve seen, Canadian Pacific’s Empress kitchens rotated between buckwheat, Scottish, and wholewheat pancakes.

Click image to download a 506-KB PDF of this menu.

While there were nearly 100 different items to order from the lunch menus, the center of the menu highlighted a “chef’s special.” On September 9, the special was a lamb curry. The day before it was a cod steak, while September 6 was another lamb dish.

Click image to download a 424-KB PDF of this menu.

The person featured on the cover of today’s dinner menu is Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk (1771-1820). Douglas helped many poor families in Scotland resettle in various part of Canada, including the Red River Colony, which later played an important role in the construction of the Canadian Pacific. While Douglas’ aims were entirely altruistic, his colonists conflicted with the Métis (French-Indian) peoples who already lived in the area, which led to both military and legal battles.

The stress over these conflicts contributed to Douglas’ early death at the age of 48 in Pau, France, which coincidentally was featured on yesterday’s cover. British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains were named for him, and Canadian Pacific’s 2-10-4 Selkirk locomotives, which were used to pull the Dominion and other passenger trains through the mountains, were named for the Selkirk range and therefore indirectly named after Douglas.