In 1930, Canadian Pacific bought a 900-acre island that was just a few hundred feet off the shore of Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. Newcastle Island had previously been a source of coal, but the coal mine was exhausted, so CP built a recreation pavilion with a soda fountain and a dance floor built on springs. Between 1931 and 1939, it operated ships from Vancouver, bringing hundreds of people a day to Newcastle Island during the summer season.

Click image to view and download a 252-KB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.

We’ve previously seen a lunch menu featuring Newcastle Island on the cover. The menu was used on a Canadian Pacific steamship in British Columbia coastal service, possibly one going to Newcastle. Today’s menu is for a tea service featuring breads, jams, and hot or iced tea, coffee, or ice cream.

Unlike the lunch menu shown previously, this menu is unpriced, which means it probably wasn’t used on the island. Instead, it most likely was used on one of Canadian Pacific steamships to Alaska, whose fare included meals. The picture of Newcastle Island is just another example of Canadian Pacific’s cross-advertising.

After the war, Canadian Pacific’s Newcastle resort was no longer profitable and the company sold the island to the city of Nanaimo in 1955. Nanaimo in turn sold it to British Columbia which turned it into a provincial park. CP’s pavilion was restored in 1984 and today operates as a cafe.