Mount Eisenhower Dinner Menu from 1947

Posted on by August 21, 2023
Reply

This is an example of what I call the Bodoni series of menus because the title of the photograph is printed in all-capital Bodoni letters on the front. The Bodoni series closely resembles the Script series, such as this one with a similar but not identical photo of Mount Eisenhower. The front covers of both menus were printed in 1946, though today’s menu has a date inside indicating that it was used on the dining car of Canadian Pacific’s Dominion in 1947.

Click image to download an 1.6-MB PDF of this menu.

Portraying one of the most photogenic features of Banff National Park, the very same photo that is on today’s menu was also used on a 1948 menu with a blue cover that was used on an Alaska steamship; a 1948 dining car menu with a gray cover; a 1949 menu with a white cover from the Banff Springs Hotel; and a 1951 dining car menu with a yellow cover. Indeed, this particular photo may have adorned more varieties of Canadian Pacific menus than any other. Continue reading →

Notes by the Way Through the Canadian Rockies

Posted on by September 3, 2023
Reply

The rather boring but heavy-duty cover of this odd-sized (approx. 4-5/8″x9-5/8″) booklet hides the fact that it contains many beautiful photos inside, and in particular four in full color, plus one color painting. Canadian Pacific was one of the first railroads to take advantage of Kodachrome, which had been introduced in 1935, in its advertising and menus.

Click image to download a 19.9-MB PDF of this 46-page booklet.

Still, it is a little bit of a surprise to see color photos in an along-the-way booklet. Passengers generally saw such booklets only after they had purchased tickets and were on the trains, so there wasn’t any need to use color photos to sell the trip. However, Canadian Pacific still wanted to sell visits to its hotels in the Rockies, and the color photos used here helped do that. Continue reading →

Old Acadia in Nova Scotia

Posted on by August 22, 2023
Reply

As previously noted here, the Dominion Atlantic Railway had been a wholly owned but independently operated subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific since 1911. The railway served Nova Scotia, which had once been occupied by French-speaking Acadians. During the French & Indian War, most Acadians had been forcibly deported, with nearly half dying in transit. Nearly a century later, the sad plight of the Acadians was covered in a Longfellow poem called Evangeline.

Click image to download a 7.4-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

In the 1920s, Dominion Atlantic noted that large numbers of descendants of the surviving Acadians were returning to Nova Scotia as tourists. To promote this tourism, it bought land near the former site of a community where Evangeline was supposed to have lived known as Grand Pré, which just happened to be on the railway’s main line. It made this land into a park, planting gardens, opening a museum, erecting a statue of Evangeline, and raising funds to build a replica of a church that once served the community. Eventually, in 1957, the railway sold this park to the Canadian government and it is now a national historic site. Continue reading →

Resorts in the Canadian Rockies in 1930

Posted on by August 5, 2023
Reply

The Chung collection has a Canadian Pacific booklet about resorts in the Canadian Rockies dated 1906. Between the Chung collection and archive.org are annual editions of the booklet from 1910 to 1933. From 1911 to 1923, these have a color painting on the cover and black-and-white photos inside.

Click image to download an 25.0-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

The 1924 issue has color paintings on both front and back covers. The front cover painting is signed GFG, meaning Gordon Fraser Gillespie, who eventually worked full time for CP but in 1924 was working on commission. The back cover painting isn’t credited, but it was by an artist named Carl Rungius. From 1925 to 1931, color paintings by a variety of Canadian fine artists were featured on many of the interior pages as well. Continue reading →

Resorts of the Canadian Rockies in 1926

Posted on by August 5, 2023
Reply

This is a strange booklet that really comes in two parts. First is a cover that is about 6-1/2″x9.2″. The fine print says the cover was printed in Canada. Second is the interior portion which is about 12″x9.2″. It was printed in the United States and probably shipped to Canada to be stapled to the covers. Once stapled, the interior pages probably folded in half again to fit into the cover.

Click image to download a 20.6-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet. Click here to download a 2.2-MB PDF of the full wraparound cover.

This booklet is from archive.org so I don’t have an actual example to know how it worked. I downloaded the scans of each page, touched up the covers, and relaid it out to be as close to the original as possible. One question is how big was the original, as the archive.org scans are not all the same size. I have a 1929 edition of the same book that came without the covers, and it is about 9.2″x12.1″, so I used this size for this 1926 edition. Continue reading →

Canadian Pacific 1929 Memograms

Posted on by August 5, 2023
Reply

I’ve previously told how husband-wife artist team Martin & Flora DeMuth talked Canadian Pacific into letting them go on at least 15 cruises in exchange for doing artwork and (in Martin’s case) giving lectures for those cruises. Indeed, it is likely that CP actually paid the DeMuths for their work in addition to giving them free room and board on lengthy cruises some of which, in today’s dollars, cost passengers a minimum of $40,000 apiece.

Click image to download a 7.0-MB PDF of these 11 memograms.

Here are some of Flora DeMuth sketches, or “memograms,” that were given to passengers aboard CP’s 72-day Mediterranean cruise (whose fares started at around $16,000 in today’s dollars) in 1929. Some memograms were postcard size and designed to be mailed to friends if passengers wanted. But today’s sketches are nearly 8-1/2″x11″ and the back is entirely blank. Passengers might receive scores of sketches during a single cruise and many presumably took them home to put into albums or stuff into boxes. Continue reading →

Canadian Pacific Fish & Game Dinner Menu

Posted on by August 5, 2023
1

This dining car menu celebrates Canadian fish & game, or the hunters of same. The front cover, shown below, shows someone catching what looks like a smallmouth bass. The back cover shows two hunters, one aiming at a rocky mountain goat. This could be a subtle dig at the Great Northern, Canadian Pacific’s great rival until the Canadian National managed to get itself organized. Neither of the illustrations are signed, I suspect because they aren’t good enough that an artist would want to take credit for them.

Click image to download a 3.5-MB PDF of this menu.

The menu is undated, but based on the lamb chop index it is from somewhere between 1924 and 1927 (CP frequently changed the price of lamb chops on its menus). Based on the design, particularly the decoration around the edges of the interior pages, I would say it is from 1924 or 1925. Continue reading →

The New Lounge Lunch Menu

Posted on by August 5, 2023
Reply

This menu pictures the interior of one of the comfortable lounges in the new Jasper Park Lodge. Above the fireplace is a piece of Northwest Indian artwork that was also pictured on the lodge’s beverage menu .

Click image to download a 2.4-MB PDF of this menu card.

Dated one day after yesterday’s dinner menu, today’s lunch menu is almost as elaborate. It includes a choice of three appetizers, three soups, eight entrées, potatoes and vegetables, salad, five desserts, and a beverage. Among the entrées were bacon and eggs, kippered herring, roast pork, and cold salmon.

The New Central Building Dinner Menu

Posted on by August 5, 2023
Reply

As previously noted, CN’s log-built Jasper Park Lodge burned to the ground in 1952, forcing the railroad to hastily erect a new lodge made of fireproof stone, concrete, and steel. While not as rustic as the old one, it was 40 percent larger, providing room for meetings and conventions as well as ordinary tourists. The building had lobby, dining, and entertainment facilities only; sleeping rooms were in separate cabins that were not harmed by the fire.

Click image to download a 2.4-MB PDF of this menu card.

Dated July 21, this unpriced dinner menu offered one more course than the lunch menu: a relish dish. Beyond this, it had a choice of three appetizers, three soups, six entrées, three kinds of potatoes, two vegetables, a salad, and five desserts as well as a beverage. Other than the relish, the main difference between lunch and dinner was the entrées: while lunch had eight entrées, the six dinner entrées were fancier. Among the entrées on this menu were were scallops and shrimps, ham steak, prime rib, and cold fresh lobster.

Jasper 14th Tee Menu

Posted on by August 16, 2023
Reply

The 14th tee of Jasper’s golf course appears to be located on a small peninsula in Lac Beauvert. If this were a modern golf course, the designer might have sadistically used the peninsula for the green, causing many golfers to earn penalties from losing their balls in the water.

Click image to download a 2.5-MB PDF of this menu card.

Today, Jasper’s golf course is rated one of the best in Canada, even better than the one at Banff. Both golf courses and their associated hotels are now owned by the same company, but in 1954, when this menu was issued, they were hotly competitive with one another. Continue reading →