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 →

Man of War and Balloon Menus

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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Here are two more menus from the transportation history series that we haven’t seen before. The first shows an 18th-century man-of-war ship. It was used on the Empress of Canada in August, 1965.

Click image to view and download a 1.4-MB PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

The menu still offers an 11- or 12-course meal, but the number of items in each course has been greatly reduced. The 1962 and 1963 menus took both inside pages to list these items. This one needs only one, with the other one offering a dinner suggestion and and suggested wines. There are four appetizers instead of 10, two entrées instead of three, and so forth. There is also no sorbet between entrées for cleansing the palette; passengers would have to drink water or wine to do that. Continue reading →

George Stephenson’s Rocket

Posted on by September 6, 2023
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The tracks that the Puffing Billy operated on passed in front of George Stephenson’s boyhood home, which still exists as a national historic site. I bicycled by this house once and took a tour before enjoying hot chocolate and scones. Known today as the father of railways for his many inventions, Stephenson was 32 years old when Puffing Billy was built and no longer lived in that house, but it is said that he was influenced by it when he designed his own locomotives in the 1820s.

Click image to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu or click here to view and download a 6.0-MB PDF of the menu from the Chung collection.

George Stephenson’s son, Robert, was also a railway engineer, and he designed — probably with the help of his father — the 1829 Rocket, which Canadian Pacific featured on today’s empress menu cover. Unlike the Puffing Billy, the Rocket could go 20 miles per hour, and in fact was clocked at 30 miles per hour traveling light. Continue reading →

The Penny-Farthing Breakfast Menu

Posted on by March 24, 2023
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This menu clearly has the same theme of historic transportation devices as the ones shown in the past several days, but it is a breakfast card instead of a dinner folder. The penny-farthing or high-wheeler bicycle was briefly popular before the modern safety bicycle, whose wheels are usually the same size and chain driven. Since then, the image of the penny-farthing, with its disproportionately large front wheel, has become the epitome of obsolete transportation.

Click image to download a 259-KB PDF of this menu.

For breakfast, passengers had a choice of 12 different fruits, four juices, and five fruit compotes. Then there were two soups, ten cereals, two kinds of fish, and a variety of eggs and meats. Buckwheat cakes (with or without raisins), waffles, French toast, nine kinds of bread or toast, four pastries, and coffee, tea, cold or hot chocolate, or “yogourt” round out the menu. This menu was dated August 20; passengers to Quebec would disembark that day, while passengers to Montreal remained on board for one more night.