CN 1921 British Columbia Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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The front cover of this menu shows a graffiti artist practicing his trade in front of some other hooligans while the back cover shows Canadian National’s Vancouver train station, which offered huge expanses of stone walls for aspiring graffiti artists. That may not be what CN intended in 1921, but it’s what I see today.

Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu.

The front cover painting is signed Thomas W. Mitchell, who also did the paintings for the Ontario menu shown here a couple of days ago. The back cover painting is unsigned and may have been done by an in-house graphics artist. Continue reading →

Canadian National 1921 Quebec Bridge Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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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. Continue reading →

Canadian National Ontario Menu from 1921

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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In January 1921, when this menu was printed, Canadian National was barely 18 months old and consisted of a variety of bankrupt railroads. Obviously trying to find an identify for itself in face of competition from the mighty Canadian Pacific, this menu encourages people to use “the National Way” (as opposed to the Pacific Way, I suppose).

Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this menu.

The front cover painting shows someone planting seeds in Ontario after viciously deforesting the native pine and maple forests. A back cover painting shows the eventual result of this environmental destruction as Ontario has been turned into a polluted wasteland, its rivers plugged up by dams to generate electricity for the industrial destroyers. Or, as it was known in 1921, Progress. Continue reading →

John Milton Dinner Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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Here’s a menu in what I call the Artist’s Series. We’ve previously seen Shakespeare, John Constable, and Robert Burns, all of which were dated 1957. This one honors John Milton and is dated 1961. Since all of the other steamship menus I have from 1961 are in a different series, this was probably the last year the Artist’s Series would have been used on CP trans-Atlantic ships.

Click image to download an 582-KB PDF of this menu.

The watercolor on the cover is signed Landon, about whom I haven’t previously been able to find any information–perhaps because I misread the name as Lendon. England did have a portrait and landscape painter named Brenda Landon (1907-2005), at least until 1961 when she remarried and became Brenda Pye. I haven’t verified that she did these menu covers, but since the covers include both portraits and landscapes, it seems possible. Continue reading →

St. James’ Palace 1953 Dinner Menu

Posted on by January 10, 2024
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The U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom is sometimes known as the ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. This name is derived from St. James’s Palace, the oldest royal palace in London (which for some reason the menu spells St. James’). Although the monarch no longer resides there, his sister and some other relatives do and it is the official location of the Marshall of the Diplomatic Corps, the official liaison between the king and foreign diplomats. Most residents of Britain and Canada probably know all this, but U.S. residents find it confusing that the United Kingdom has so many royal palaces for so many purposes.

Click image to download a 541-KB PDF of this menu.

In any case, this menu was used on the Empress of Scotland on April 24, 1953. This was the first night out for the aging empress on its first trans-Atlantic voyage of the season. The ocean liner had entered service as the Empress of Japan in 1930, renamed in 1942, and continued to work for CP until 1957. Continue reading →

The Mounted 1949 Dinner Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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We’ve seen this photograph before on a 1941 menu in what I call the Bodoni series (with vertical lines framing the photo) as well as on this 1947 menu in what I call the Center Portrait series, which also had Bodoni type but no lines. Today’s menu is from 1949 and is in what I call the Upper Left Color series because most of the menus in the series have blue, yellow, green, magenta, or rose backgrounds. This one is distinguished by having a grey background.

Click image to download a 1.3-MB PDF of this menu.

On most U.S. railroads, the distinctions between one menu series and another are quite obvious. But, as I noted on the Canadian Pacific menu series page, Canadian menu series seemed to evolve rather than leap from one series to another. Even within many of the series I have defined there are differences: for example, only a few of the Center Portrait series also use Bodoni type. In any case, this “Mounted” (the title of the text on the back) is clearly different enough from the other menus that used the same photo that I was glad to fill in this gap in my collection. Continue reading →

Africa-South America Cruise Memograms

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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Here are ten “memograms” by Florence DeMuth, the resident artist aboard many of Canadian Pacific’s cruises in the late 1920s and 1930s. The drawings include scenes of Gibraltar, Naples, Venice, Greece, the Nile, Palestine, Zanzibar, South Africa, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro.

Click image to download a 4.9-MB PDF of this group of ten mammograms.

This combination of stops would only have been made on one of CP’s Africa-South America cruises that took place between 1928 and 1936. Though not mentioned in the name, the cruises also visited Mediterranean ports. The person who sold these to me said they were from circa 1935. In that year, the cruise was aboard the Empress of Australia and was advertised as “five cruises in one.” I’m tentatively dating the memograms to that year.

CP Wheat Farm 1931 Dinner Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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M. Leone Bracker preferred to draw real people, not models. This suggests somewhere on the Canadian prairie lived a farm family who looked like the people on the cover of this menu. Canadian Pacific must have offered Bracker a pass to visit various parts of the railroad so he could make these drawings.

Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this menu.

While other menus in the 50th anniversary series represented different parts of Canadian Pacific’s operations — railroad, steamships, and hotels — this one represents the settlement of the West that was made possible by construction of the railway. In addition to the railway, steamships, and hotels, a small blurb on the back of all of these menus noted that Canadian Pacific “employs 225,000 miles of telegraph wire” and also offers traveller’s checks. I suspect Bracker didn’t do a menu cover for traveller’s checks but I won’t be surprised if he did one for the telegraph. Continue reading →

CP Hotels 1931 Lunch Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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Just as yesterday’s Angus Shops menu represented Canadian Pacific’s railroad operations, the Empress of Japan menu represented its steamships, so this menu, with Banff Springs Hotel on the cover, represents its hotel operations. Thanks to Canadian Pacific, “from one end of the land to the other,” says the back of the menu, “magnificent hostelries have arisen, which give Canada a new and enviable opportunity to tell her story to those who come and see her beauties and opportunities at first hand.”

Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this menu.

The Indians and teepees on the cover represent live in western Canada before the arrival of the railroad. “Where only the Indians had hunted on the mountains,” notes the back, “now the great hotels at Banff and Lake Louise arrest the eye.” Although the cover appears to show two different Indians, a close look reveals they are both the same person, but one is somewhat less detailed — perhaps representing the fading of that style of life. Like the other two menus in the 50th Anniversary series, this cover was drawn by M. Leone Bracker. Continue reading →

Angus Shops Lunch Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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Several years ago, I posted menus from the Chung collection that featured steamships on the cover. One showed the Empress of Japan along with some sights people might see in Asia, possibly on a Canadian Pacific world cruise. On my Canadian Pacific menu series page, I included this with other menus that featured cruise ships or steamships even though the Empress of Japan menu was actually used in a dining car.

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

The fine print on that menu noted that 1931 was the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It turns out that the railway did a series of menus celebrating that anniversary. As an economy during the Depression, the menus all featured black-and-white covers. The cover on today’s menu represents Angus Shops where Canadian Pacific built hundreds of steam locomotives as well as many of its freight and passenger cars. Continue reading →