The first menu today features New Brunswick’s Restigouche River, “a famous salmon stream.” The Restigouche was also featured on a 1955 menu that had a different photo and different cover design. Today’s menu is from 1958 and was used for dinner on a trip of the National Railway Historical Society.

Click image to download a 2.0-MB PDF of this menu contributed by Brian Leiteritz.

The table d’hôte menu offered halibut steak, chicken pie, or prime ribs of beef for $3.25 or charcoal broiled sirloin steak for $4.50 (multiply prices by eight to get today’s U.S. dollars). All of the meals included fruit cocktail or soup, potatoes and vegetable, dessert, and beverage. For some reason, the chicken pie and sirloin steak were designated “National,” suggesting that CN chefs had their own special way of preparing these dishes.

Click image to download a 2.4-MB PDF of this menu contributed by Brian Leiteritz.

The second menu is one whose cover we’ve seen before on the same 1958 trip of the National Railway Historical Society. Today’s menu is an undated a la carte menu for a café car.

There is one significant difference between the two menu covers: today’s identifies the photo as showing the Lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, while the previous one called it the Cariboo District. One of these is wrong, as the Lower Fraser Valley is generally considered to be the area west of Chilliwack, while the Caribou District is well north of there and only includes a little bit of the upper Fraser Valley.

The lake in the photo is Williams Lake, which is a little east of the upper Fraser River and 450 miles north of Chilliwack. Williams Lake is in the heart of the Caribou District, so that is the correct label. I assume the incorrect title was later corrected so this menu was probably issued before 1958.