Banff Springs Hotel 1931 Booklet

Posted on by May 2, 2023
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A few days ago, I suggested that using the covers of its booklets and menus advertising its various hotels to publish a political statement claiming its moral superiority over rival Canadian National was poor marketing. Today’s booklet is an example of better marketing for those hotels.

Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this booklet. Click here to download a large image of this wraparound cover.

The booklet is filled with eleven warm color illustrations and three etchings showing guests enjoying themselves at the hotel and surrounding area. One of the illustrations is signed “Palenske,” as is one of the etchings. This refers to Reinhold H. Palenske (1884-1953). Continue reading →

Banff Springs Hotel Expression Booklet

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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This booklet is from my own collection. Each of the “expression” booklets advertising Canadian Pacific hotels have a translucent sheet of paper separating the cover from the inside material and advertising the then-forthcoming Empress of Britain. To make this easier to read, I scanned the booklet with a white piece of paper behind this translucent sheet.

Click image to view and download a 24.1-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

I dated the Empress Hotel booklet, shown here a few days ago, to 1929 because it said that a new wing of that hotel would open in October 1929. All of the booklets also state that the York Hotel had already opened in June of 1929, but some of them could have been issued in 1930. The menus with the same covers are dated anywhere from 1928 to 1930, so to be conservative I am dating this booklet to 1930. Continue reading →

The Mystery of Place Viger

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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Yesterday’s booklet about the York Hotel and its 1,000 rooms raises a question that I have mentioned before: why didn’t Canadian Pacific build a similar hotel in Montreal? Not only was Montreal its headquarters city, it was Canada’s second-largest city with nearly 96 percent as many residents as Toronto. It was also the home port for the company’s empress fleet and — as Canada’s largest French-speaking city — offered the same sort of exotic appeal as Victoria (which has been called Canada’s “most British city“), on the other end of the country.

Click image to view and download a 24.8-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet from the Chung collection.

As illustrated by the above booklet, the Montreal hotel in Canadian Pacific’s chain was Place Viger, which was built in 1898 and designed by Bruce Price, the architect of the original Chateau Frontenac. As originally built, Place Viger and Chateau Frontenac were both about six stories tall. In 1924, CP added an 18-story tower to the Frontenac, but made no similar additions to Place Viger. Continue reading →

York Hotel Expression Booklet

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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The York Hotel was brand-new when this series of booklets and menus was published, having opened in June, 1929. The Canadian Pacific should have made this opening of the facility it billed as the “largest hotel in the British Empire” in the forefront of its advertising. Instead, like its other hotels, it is lost in this Expression series in which the railway is trying to define itself in the public mind as the true embodiment “of a progressive nation’s character.”

Click image to view and download a 42.3-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet from the Chung collection.

The backs of all of these booklets and menus have smaller images of CP’s dozen main lodges, chateaus, and hotels. The York is allotted a slightly larger image than any of the others, but most people wouldn’t notice the difference. Continue reading →

Chateau Frontenac Expression Booklet

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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“Built in the matter of an eighteenth century French chateau,” says this booklet, the Frontenac was the epitome of a chateau-style hotel. Originally built in 1893 but expanded with construction of the central tower in 1924, it had 567 rooms in 1930, more than either the 1916 or 1939 Hotels Vancouver. This is despite the fact that Vancouver had almost twice as many residents as Quebec city in 1930. Both cities were jumping-off points for CP steamships, but Quebec had to compete with Montreal as a departure or arrival city.

Click image to view and download a 115.0-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet from the Chung collection. (Two copies of the booklet are included in the file, which is why it is so big.)

While the 18-story central tower reached an impressive height of 262 feet, the smaller round tower in front was the place to be. It had a tea room on the ground floor, a cozy dining room on the next floor, a drawing room/salon on the third floor, and three oddly shaped suites each on the next two floors. The suite in front, with its large bank of windows, would have offered incredible views of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Today, one of these is known as the Van Horne Suite and it rents for CN$3,800 a night (about US$2,800). Continue reading →

Hotel Vancouver Expression Booklet

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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Wikipedia says the 1916 Hotel Vancouver was built in an Italian Renaissance style. It was replaced in 1939 by an even grander chateau-style hotel. This contrasts with the Royal Alexandra, which was closed in 1967 and not replaced, leaving Canadian Pacific without a hotel in midwestern Canada’s largest metropolis.

Click image to view and download a 51.2-MB PDF of this 12-page booklet from the Chung collection.

Yet the 1939 replacement was partly a matter of politics. Canadian National wanted to build a newer hotel to compete with Canadian Pacific’s Hotel Vancouver, but couldn’t finance it because of the Depression. Canadian Pacific may have decided it was safer to join with Canadian National in financing half of the new Hotel Vancouver than risk that CN would get enough money to build its own hotel. Continue reading →

Royal Alexandra Hotel Expression Booklet

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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The Chateau style of the Empress Hotel, featured in yesterday’s booklet, as well as the Chateau Frontenac, has always been a favorite. This contrasts sharply to the more blocky style of Winnipeg’s Royal Alexandra Hotel even though the Alexandra was built two years earlier than the Empress. The hotel cost $1 million to construct (about $30 million in today’s U.S. dollars) and was billed as Canadian Pacific’s most luxurious up to that time.

Click image to view and download a 36.2-MB PDF of this 12-page booklet from the Chung collection.

Yet the design was, frankly, boring. Did Canadian Pacific choose a boring design because it thought Winnipeg was boring? Did it think that a more cubical building would attract people by being more modern? If so, it failed as the exterior appearance of the building was quickly dated, which perhaps contributed to the fact that it closed in 1967 and has since been demolished. Other than Place Viger, Canadian Pacific’s other hotels illustrated on the back cover of this booklet have all survived or, in the case of the Hotel Vancouver, were replaced by an even grander Chateau-style hotel. Continue reading →

Empress Hotel Expression Booklet

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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We’ve previously seen a menu whose cover is almost identical to this booklet. Nothing on the two covers discloses whether they are a booklet or a menu. We’ve also seen a booklet similar to this one that has Lake Louise on the cover instead of Victoria’s Empress Hotel.

Click image to view and download a 44.5-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet from the Chung collection.

As I wrote in the post about the Lake Louise booklet, I am pretty sure Canadian Pacific issued this series of menus and booklets as a defensive measure against the Canadian National Railways, its government-subsidized competitor. If so, it seems to me this is a poor job of marketing. On one hand, the covers of hotel-oriented booklets failed to provide people with an attractive reason to stay at those hotels. On the other hand, the claims that the private Canadian Pacific was somehow more of an “expression of a progressive nation’s character” than the publicly owned Canadian National would be considered laughable to anyone with a socialist leaning. Continue reading →

Chateau Lake Louise Menu from 1929

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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In the late 1920s, Canadian Pacific owned and operated a dozen major hotels and lodges, all of which are pictured on the back of this menu. We’ve previously seen menus like this for six of those hotels; this brings it up to seven. Still to be found are menus picturing the Algonquin, Palliser, Saskatchewan, York, and Emerald Lake Chalet.

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

This particular menu was used on a special train for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks going from Vancouver to Port Arthur, which is now part of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. The Elks 1929 international convention from July 7 to July 13 attracted 10,000 people to Los Angeles, and the train was carrying eastern Canadian members home from that meeting. Continue reading →

The Economics of Ocean Liners

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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Canadian Pacific’s first Empress of Japan made its first revenue voyage in April, 1891, and its last one in July, 1922, thus providing more than 31 years of service during which it made 315 trans-Pacific trips. During two of those years, it had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty during World War I, and were it not for the war it probably would have made about 20 more Pacific trips.

Click image to view and download a 22.0-MB PDF of this booklet on the history of Canadian Pacific ships through 1961 from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

Yet the longevity of the Empress of Japan was unusual. The average empress ship built new for the Canadian Pacific served that company for fewer than 18 years. When counting all passenger ocean liners built for Canadian Pacific, the average service life was less than 15 years. Many made fewer than 100 revenue voyages before being wrecked or impressed into military service and sunk by some enemy torpedo. Continue reading →