Tourist’s Map of Canada from 1931

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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Though the cover claims this is a map of Canada, it doesn’t include any of the northern territories or even the northern parts of Canada’s major provinces. It does show all of the 48 states and (in an inset) most of Alaska. Canadian National rail routes are emphasized by thick red lines, CN steamship routes by thick red dashes, and other railroads and steamship routes are in thinner black lines and dashes.

Click image to download a 7.1-MB PDF of this brochure.

The non-map side has panels on Canada’s Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, Jasper, Canada’s Pacific Coast, and Alaska. A seventh panel titled “An Open Door to Canada” makes it clear that this map is aimed at potential tourists from the United States, as it talks about Canada providing “the fascination of travel in a foreign land.” Continue reading →

Through the Mountains to the Atlantic Coast

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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Canadian National and its subsidiary, Grand Trunk, had a line from Montreal to Portland, Maine, including about 160 miles in New Hampshire and Maine. Via its subsidiary, Central of Vermont, CN had another line from Montreal to Windsor, Vermont, including about 130 miles in Vermont. This 1930 booklet encourages Canadians to take one of these two lines to mountain and coastal resorts in the Green Mountains of Vermont, White Mountains of New Hampshire, and beaches of Maine.

Click image to download a 6.1-MB PDF of this 12-page booklet.

Seven pages of text and photos are followed by two pages of tiny print listing hotels, camps, and golf courses reached by Canadian National trains in these three states. While interesting, it seems like the beaches of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia could match those of Maine. However, Canadian mountains more impressive than New Hampshire’s White Mountains were at least 3,000 miles away from Montreal.

Canadian National 1930 Children’s Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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This menu is 16 pages long, but only the centerfold has the actual menu. Ten pages are dedicated to pictures and little poems parents could use to entertain their children. The inside front and inside back covers credit the poems and the menu to the “Sleeping & Dining Car Department,” a message so important it had to be repeated.

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

The menu itself offers four meals each for breakfast, dinner, and tea. Prices range from 35¢ (US$4.60 in today’s money) for a boiled egg, a slice of bread and butter, a sliced orange, and milk or cocoa for tea to 85¢ (US$11.25 today) for soup, fish, potatoes, stewed tomatoes, fruit salad or pudding, and milk or cocoa for dinner. While most of the meals came with milk or cocoa, just one came with malted milk. Continue reading →

Canadian National 1921 Maritimes Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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This menu dedicated to the Maritime provinces — which the back cover explains are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island — has a painting of eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century sailing ships on the front cover and an industrial port scene, with what appears to be an oil refinery, on the back cover.

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

Unlike yesterday’s Prairie Provinces menu, both of the paintings on this one are signed McLean. That would be Thomas Wesley McLean (1881-1951), who was born in Kendal, Ontario. He studied art in Toronto and painted scenes in Algonquin National Park. His interest in the park attracted other artists who together formed the Algonquin School of Art. Continue reading →

CN 1921 Prairie Menu

Posted on by December 29, 2023
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At first glance, this menu appears to be in the same series as the ones shown in the past three days, but it does have a couple of differences. Like the others, it has a front-cover painting of a historic scene — Fort Garry, Manitoba, the forerunner of Winnipeg — and a back-cover painting of a contemporary scene — wheat harvesting on the prairie with a steam-powered tractor. Unlike the other menus, neither of these paintings are signed, and the back cover one is particularly crude, so I’m pretty sure they were done in house.

Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.

The other difference is that a small painting inset on the front cover breaks the precedent of dedicating the front cover exclusively to historical scenes in favor of advertising the Fort Garry Hotel, Canadian National’s hotel in Winnipeg. CN didn’t bother advertising Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier on the Ontario menu, so it seems a bit crass that they added this ad to this menu. Continue reading →

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 →