Here are three menus used in Canadian Pacific hotels in the early 1940s. First up is a 1940 dinner menu from the Royal Alexandra in Winnipeg. The menu offers table d’hôte dinners for $1, $1.25, and $1.50 — multiply by 15 to get today’s US dollars. All of the table d’hôte dinners include hors d’oeuvres, soup, entrée, veggies, dessert, and beverage. The $1.50 meal also includes fish and salad courses. The main difference between the $1.25 and $1.00 meals is the entrées, which is strange because on the a la carte side the price difference between some of the entrées is as little as 5¢.
Click image to view and download a 8.4-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.
The rather small photo on the front cover depicts Lower Fort Garry, which was built by Hudson’ Bay Company in 1831 after Upper Fort Garry was destroyed by a flood. Upper Fort Garry was located where downtown Winnipeg now stands, but Lower Fort Garry has been preserved as a national historic site.
Click image to view and download a 9.0-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.
Second is a 1941 lunch menu from the Hotel Vancouver, which was half owned by CP and half by CN. In addition to an extensive a la carte side, the menu offered a Business Men’s Luncheon for $0.75 and a Ladies Special Luncheon for $1.00. It isn’t clear why ladies were expected to pay a third more than men, as both meals come with the same number of course. In fact, much of the pricing doesn’t make sense. The a la carte side offered Irish lamb stew for 80¢; but as part of the Men’s Luncheon for 75¢ the same stew came with cole slaw, soup, dessert, and a beverage.
Click image to view and download a 6.6-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.
This is a 1942 dinner menu from the Hotel Saskatchewan in Regina. The table d’hôte side offered 11 different entrées, from red snapper for $1.00 to sirloin steak for $1.60, all of which came with a choice of six different hors d’oeuvres, three soups, three veggies, potatoes prepared one of three ways, seven desserts, and beverage. This pricing is also inconsistent; on the table d’hôte side, the red snapper is 35¢ more than the snapper on the a la carte side, but the roast turkey on the table d’hôte side is 70¢ more than on the a la carte side.
Click image to view and download a 2.5-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.
This last menu doesn’t really belong with the others as it is from a decade later and was used aboard a steamship, not in the hotel. With the hotel name in a little banner at the bottom of the front cover, it resembles two others we’ve seen, a 1952 dinner menu used on the Empress of Canada and an undated dinner menu used on an an Alaska-bound steamship that I estimated was from 1947 or 1948.
Today’s menu was used on the Empress of Scotland in 1951. It offers a multi-course dinner typical of Canadian Pacific ocean liners. However, unlike the first-class dinner menus from the 1930s, this one does not have sorbets to cleanse the palette between courses. Also, while it would be possible to order separate fish, entrée, joint, grill, and cold buffet courses, I suspect most people just chose one or possibly two of those courses, which would make it a six- or seven-course meal.