Minaki Lodge was a misbegotten effort by CN predecessor Grand Trunk Pacific to build a resort in the middle of nowhere. Although Minaki is in Ontario, it is only 114 miles east of Winnipeg but 1,244 miles west of Toronto. Grand Trunk Pacific executives probably reasoned that a resort that was a day’s travel away from Canada’s main population centers would be more attractive to residents who didn’t have the time or money to travel all the way to the Canadian Rockies.

Click image to download a 1.6-MB PDF of this menu.

When Grand Trunk Pacific went bankrupt and was taken over by the government and made part of Canadian National, the new owner rebuilt the lodge, whereupon it immediately burned down. CN rebuilt it again, including a golf course that required 30 trainloads of soil to cover up the rocky outcroppings of the Canadian Shield. It apparently did well for a few years but CN sold it after WWII. It passed through several owners until 2003 when it again burned to the ground. It is an indication of the lodge’s lack of profitability that the owners had no insurance.

This is another menu used on the 1949 tour of the American Association of Railroad Ticket Agents. Like the one from the day before yesterday, the lunch price was $2.00 with a choice of final haddie, western omelet, Irish stew, baked ham, or chicken salad.

While all three of the lunch menus shown here today, yesterday, and the day before are from the same year, their cover designs are quite different. All they have in common is the words “Menu” and “Canadian National Railways” and the presence of a photograph. But the typefaces on the Glacier menu differ from the others, the photos each have different orientations, and the background graphics are also different, being none on the first menu, a slanted shadow on yesterday’s, and horizontal bars on today’s.