Happy holidays to Streamliner Memory readers. Here are some Canadian Pacific Christmas menus from the University of British Columbia’s Chung collection. Although these menus are over an eight-year period and one is aboard a steamship and the other two are in hotels, they have several things in common.

Click image to view and download a PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

First, all have roast turkey as at least one of the main courses. In the above menu, from the Hotel Vancouver, it is the only choice as a main course, while the other two offer a few other choices. Second, all have plum pudding for one of the desserts and a coupe — that is, an ice cream dish — for another. They all also have soup and fish courses.

Click image to view and download a PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

The Hotel Vancouver menu is the only one that is priced, at $1.50 (about US$19 in today’s money, which seems pretty reasonable even if the meal has limited selections). It also has a musical programme and an attractive wraparound cover showing four young lads dragging a yule log into a pub. The Empress of Britain menu also has a musical programme on the back, but it has only three numbers compared with ten on the hotel menu.

Click image to view and download a PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

The Empress Hotel menu skips the musical programme in favor of listing all of the things guests of the hotel can do on Christmas day: singing or listening to carols in the dining hall, listening to live music while enjoying “toothsome dainties” in the bookroom at tea hour, observe the firing of the yule log at 7 pm in the lower lounge, enjoy “a goodlie companie in colorful procession, their voices loud upraised in Latin song” at dinner time, and attend a yule ball at 9 pm.