This menu is similar in format to yesterday’s: a front-cover painting purporting to show a historic scene and a back-cover painting showing a similar scene in the present day wrapped around a separate menu paper with a blurb about CN and a two-page inner menu. Today’s menu shows the site of the new opened (in 1919) Quebec Bridge across the St. Lawrence River. The bridge serves both the railroad and auto traffic and has been owned by CN since 1993.

Click image to download a 1.4-MB PDF of this menu.

I’m calling this the Quebec Bridge menu, but the bridge is only shown on the back cover while the front cover apparently shows the St. Lawrence River long before the bridge was built. A caption refers to “Cartier and other pioneers.” Jacques Cartier made three voyages to explore the St. Lawrence River in 1534-1542. The first one used two ships, so that must be the one pictured here.

Both paintings are signed McCrea, which would be Harold Wellington McCrea (1887-1969). McCrea was born in Peterborough, Ontario and, after graduating from the Ontario School of Art, worked for the Grip design studio from 1910 to 1918. After spending two years at the Art Institute of Chicago, he opened his own studio working as a commercial artist and painting landscapes of Ontario and the Canadian Rockies. The painting of Quebec Bridge shown on the back cover was sold in a 2009 auction, which is what makes me suspect that, for this series of menus, CN purchased the image rights to existing paintings rather than having them commissioned as I doubt CN would have sold it if it owned it.

Dated June 8, 1921, the inner menu is even briefer than yesterday’s, listing a table d’hôte meal with three entrées: salmon, chicken croquettes, or roast lamb. The meal is priced at $1.50, which is about US$18 today. The menu says it was used on a special train for the Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association.