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Mount Edith Cavell 1947 Lunch Menu

Posted on January 27, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

We’ve previously seen paintings of Mount Edith Cavell on the cover of a 1927 dining car menu and on various CN booklets used to advertise Jasper Park. Based on the date, the image on this menu appears to be a color photograph, but it could be a colorized black-and-white photo.

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

The unpriced lunch menu offers lots of choices: three appetizers, three soups, eight entrées, two vegetables, three kinds of potatoes, five desserts, and no beverages. The only thing missing is a salad.

Indian Chief and Canadian Mountie Menu

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

This menu was used at a 1947 conference of the National Life Insurance Company of Montpelier, Vermont. The illustration shows an obviously staged and heavily colorized photo of an Indian and a Royal Canadian Mountie and their horses, with the Indian submissively dismounted while the Mountie disdainfully looks away.

Click image to download a 224-KB PDF of this menu.

The National Life Insurance Company must have been especially cheap as this menu offers absolutely no options: one appetizer, one soup, one entrée, one style of potato, one mix of vegetables, no salad, one dessert, and one beverage. Tea wasn’t even offered as an alternative to coffee, though I suspect someone who really wanted it could probably have gotten it at no extra charge. The dessert, African puff glace, was probably similar to what New Orleanians call beignets, or puff pastries, and the glace was probably a sweet sauce. Continue reading →

A Century of Railway Progress

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

Canadian National Railways wasn’t even 30 years old in 1947. However, its earliest predecessor, the Montreal and Lachine Rail Road, made its inaugural trip in 1847, giving CN the excuse for publishing this booklet.

Click image to download a 5.0-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet. Click here to download a PDF of the full front-and-back cover of this booklet.

This is less a history book than a book about the changes in technology between 1847 and 1947. In 1847, the Montreal and Lachine may have been using the latest in technology with a 4-2-2 locomotive (only a few of which were built before 1850) and wooden carriages that were slightly advanced beyond the stagecoaches-on-rails that characterized the first steam railways. The same could not be said for Canadian National in 1947, which was still using steam instead of Diesels and semi-streamlined but heavyweight passenger cars instead of lightweight streamlined cars. Continue reading →

On the Way 1939 Dinner Menu

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

Today’s menu is dated August 22, the day after yesterday’s lunch menu. The colorized photograph shows one of the McLaughlin-Buicks that the lodge owned to give people tours of the park. McLaughlin Motors was a Canadian automobile manufacturer that merged into General Motors in 1918.

Click image to download a 256-KB PDF of this menu.

After writing that yesterday’s lunch menu had a greater variety of soups and entrées (3 and 7 vs. 2 and 6) than the dinner menu from the day before, today’s dinner menu has three soups and seven entrées. The entrées included sole chicken a la king; lamb casserole; broiled ham; broccoli and fried egg; beef tenderloin; and cold lamb and turkey. The orange meringue pie and arctic roll desserts sound especially tempting.

Athabaska (?) Falls 1939 Lunch Menu

Posted on January 23, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

We’ve previously seen this photo on a 1940 dinner menu. This one was used for lunch on August 23, 1939. The 1940 menu labeled the photo “Sunwapta Falls” while this one calls it “Athabaska Falls.” These are two different waterfalls, and based on comparative photos it appear this one is labeled in error and the falls in the picture are Sunwapta Falls.

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

Like the menus shown in the previous few days, this one had an ad for the new Hotel Vancouver glued in the upper left corner, which I photoshopped out. Unlike other Jasper Lodge menus we’ve seen in which the lunch menus had more choices than dinner, this one has fewer choices than the 1940 Sunwapta Falls dinner menu, but not by much.

On the Trail 1939 Lunch Menu

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

On August 21, the day after yesterday’s menu, whoever collected these menus must have enjoyed lunch from this card. The photograph, which appears to be colorized, features an unlikely scene of Indians standing by their horses and a teepee high in the Rocky Mountains. I can imagine the Blackfeet hunting in that area, but I can’t see them dragging a teepee along with them.

Click image to download a 245-KB PDF of this menu.

As seems to have been usual for the lodge, the lunch menu offered a greater selection of entrées than the dinner. This one includes bacon and eggs; halibut; hamburg steak; lamb stew; roast ham; chicken salad; and cold salmon. These came with an appetizer, a choice of three soups (compared with two on the dinner menu), veggies and potatoes, a choice of five desserts (same number as the dinner menu), and beverage.

Columbia Icefield 1939 Dinner Menu

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

On August 20, 1939, someone enjoyed dinner from this fine menu at Jasper Park Lodge. The photo shows the Columbia Icefield, which had been made accessible by a road from Jasper not long before this menu was issued. We’ve previously seen 1948 Jasper Lodge menus featuring the Columbia Icefield, but they used different photographs.

Click image to download a 242-KB PDF of this menu.

The unpriced menu offers a choice of six entrées, including pickerel, lamb chops, t-bone steak, beef sirloin, roast turkey, or cold ham & capon. These came with honey dew melon or shrimp-and-crab cocktail, cream of chicken or turtle soup, veggies, potatoes, salad, dessert, and beverage.

1937 Jasper Lodge Menu

Posted on January 20, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

Most of the previous Jasper Lodge menus we have seen have been cards, but this one is a folder. As the cover shows, the menu was used at conference of the Sun Life insurance company, so it may be that lodge management used folders for conferences and conventions and cards for ordinary people. The image on the front cover appears to be a colorized version of a black-and-white photo.

Click image to download an 471-KB PDF of this menu.

Sun Life must have been doing well despite the Depression. In 1933, it completed construction of a new, 26-story headquarters building that at the time had the most square feet of floor space of building in the British Empire. Continue reading →

Jasper Park Lodge in 1936

Posted on January 19, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

Whether due to the Depression or some internal cost-cutting measure, this booklet isn’t as fancy as the 1934 booklet presented here yesterday. That booklet included several paintings in beautiful colors by Canadian fine artist Charles W. Simpson. Today’s booklet has two color illustrations — I wouldn’t call them fine art — on the back cover (shown below), one of which is cryptically signed “ALY.”

Click image to download an 11.3-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

The missing Simpson paintings were replaced with, well, nothing. The text has been slightly edited and most of the photos in the 1934 edition are also in today’s, though many are larger (as they deserve to be). Beyond that, there is more white space. White space sells, say advertisers, but not as well as full-color landscape paintings or photographs. Continue reading →

Jasper Park Lodge in 1934

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

This booklet is beautifully decorated with four full-color paintings by Charles Walter Simpson, whose work we have seen before for both Canadian Pacific and Canadian National. The cover painting (which is on the back cover) was obviously commissioned by the railway as it prominently shows Jasper Park Lodge and surrounding bungalow cabins.

Click image to download a 10.1-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

I suspect that Canada’s community of fine artists much appreciated Canadian National and Canadian Pacific’s patronage of their work while it lasted. Four-color printing became feasible in the mid-1920s and gorgeous landscapes appeared in booklets and brochures issued by both railroads. While the above cover painting verges on commercial illustration rather than fine art, most of the paintings used in CN and CP booklets were truly fine artworks. Unfortunately for the artists, color photography was perfected in the late 1930s and replaced fine artworks in booklets. Artists continued to make posters for the railroads but they were mostly commercial rather than fine art. Continue reading →