This menu for the Trans-Canada Limited has the same date code as the previous two menus. Despite the fact that it is an evening menu while the other two were for mid-day, this one is physically only about half as big. I suspect many Canadians at the time had their main meal, or dinner, at mid-day, while they called the evening meal supper. CP used the terms mid-day and evening rather than lunch and dinner to avoid confusion.
Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu.
Canadian Pacific still managed to fit about the same number of items on the menu as on the mid-day menus, mainly by reducing the amount of white space. Many of the items are exactly the same: sirloin steak, lamb chops, broiled ham, and so forth. Many have minor variations: broiled lake trout Hollandaise instead of sauté creole or fried; finnan caddie Demonico instead of with drawn butter. Others are completely new: spaghetti au gratin; chicken fricassee with rice. A peach fritter with maple syrup is listed among the entrées for a mere 20 cents (about $2.25 today). I suspect it was really supposed to be a dessert.
It wasn’t just Canada with the meal time name issue. I’ve seen Army and Navy menus from WWII that use noon meal and evening meal instead of dinner and supper because of the confusion in names. In our family in Ohio. the noon meal was always lunch and the evening meal was supper. Dinner was reserved for Sunday, when we’d have Sunday dinner at about 2:00 in the afternoon. I knew other families who had supper as a light meal in the late evening while our supper was the big meal of the day. Being explicit about the meal time had to make life a little easier for the railroad.
Jim