The photo on the cover of this menu is reminiscent of the image on the 1937 menu presented here a couple of weeks ago. The difference is that the original lodge was shown on the earlier menu while this one has the new lodge that had been built in 1953 after the fire destroyed the original one on July 15, 1952.
Click image to download a 2.0-MB PDF of this menu.
Although most of the Jasper Lodge menus shown here have been cards, this one is not only a folder, it is especially elaborate in that the menu itself is printed on a separate piece of paper that is inserted into the folder. This makes the entire document 8 pages long, although the outside pages of the menu are blank. The menu page is also a little smaller than the cover, so bits of the inside covers are visible when the menu is open.
Canada celebrated the centennial of its confederation in 1967, and this more elaborate menu may have been printed to commemorate that. The back cover has a reproduction of a painting of the Fathers of Confederation, the 36 men who attended one of the three conferences where the new country’s government was planned. We’ve previously seen this painting on the cover of a Canadian Pacific menu that was also issued in 1927.
The original painting by Robert Harris was done in 1884, when most of the people in the painting were still alive. The painting hung in Ottawa’s first parliament building, which was destroyed in a fire, along with the painting, in 1916.
Fortunately, two years before the fire, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad had commissioned muralist Frederick Challener to make an 18’7″x8’10-1/2″ replica of the painting for display in its Hotel MacDonald in Edmonton. After the fire destroyed the original, Challener made another, even larger replica that now hangs in the new parliament building.
The Canadian Pacific menu didn’t mention this history, as by 1927 the Hotel MacDonald was run by its rival Canadian National. CN managed the hotel until 1983, when it shut it down. In 1988, it sold all of its hotel properties (including Jasper Park Lodge) to Canadian Pacific, which renovated the MacDonald and reopened it in 1991.
The unpriced menu itself looks as filling as any Jasper Lodge menu. It included four appetizers, three soups, seven entrées, three vegetables, four styles of potatoes, and six desserts. Charbroiled sirloin steak is one of the entrées, which is unusual as dining cars and hotel restaurants usually charged a premium for steak.