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Jasper Park Lodge in 1927

Posted on April 8, 2022 by Train LoverApril 2, 2022

We’ve already seen a 1927 booklet about Jasper National Park. That one was large — almost 8″x11″ — and contained several color illustrations. Today’s booklet is also from 1927, but it is smaller — about 5-1/2″x7-3/4″ — and has no color illustrations except for on the covers.

i>Click image to download an 8.4-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet.

Today’s also seems to be more about the lodge than the park. The front cover doesn’t say so, but the title page and the back cover both say “Jasper Park Lodge.” Still, the interior pages, most of which have half-page black-and-white photos, are as much about what people can do in the park as the facilities at the lodge itself. Continue reading →

Mt. Edith Cavell 1927 Menu

Posted on April 7, 2022 by Train LoverApril 2, 2022

Mt. Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park was named after an English nurse who was working in Belgium when the First World War began. She helped more than 100 wounded British and French soldiers escape German imprisonment, leading the Germans to execute her and making her a martyr. The large painting of the mountain on the cover of this menu is accompanied by smaller paintings showing the B.C. parliament building in Victoria and the Halifax town clock tower, accompanied by the Canadian national motto, “a mari usque ad mare,” or “from sea to sea.”

Click image to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu.

This menu was used on a “personally conducted Keystone Tour” of “San Francisco, Alaska and Canadian Rockies.” The menu is dated “Thursday, August 4th,” and since the style appears to be from the 1920s rather than the 1930s, this would be from 1927, the only year in the late 1920s in which August 4 was a Thursday. The table d’hôte dinner offers a choice of baked Slave Lake whitefish, fricassee of chicken, or roast leg of lamb, along with the typical accompaniments. Continue reading →

Jasper in 1926

Posted on April 6, 2022 by Train LoverMarch 8, 2022

We’ve previously seen a booklet for Jasper Park Lodge from 1924 and one about Jasper from 1927. This one, dated February 1926, is completely different from either of these. One or two photos in the 1924 edition may also be in this one, but they are cropped so differently it is hard to tell.

Click image to download a 7.1-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet.

The cover of this one is beautifully colored, while inside the graphics are all monotoned. That doesn’t mean black-and-white, however. About half the pages have both text and graphics (including photos) in green while the other half has text in green but photos in sepia. Continue reading →

Jasper and the Triangle Tour: 1925

Posted on April 5, 2022 by Train LoverMarch 8, 2022

The cover of this booklet seems designed to attract people interested in Canadian history. Two of the six figures at the top are recognizable as Alexander Mackenzie (third from the left) and David Thompson (fourth from the left), both early explorers. The others look fairly generic; I don’t even think that Native Americans who inhabited the Athabaska region dressed like the ones on the cover.

Click image to download a 15.9-MB PDF of this 36-page (plus map) booklet.

The emphasis on history seems misplaced when advertising the scenic wonders of western Canada. The rest of the booklet is filled with 28 black-and-white photographs and five color paintings illustrating those scenic wonders. Four of the paintings — the Athabaska Valley, Mount Edith Cavell, the Skeena River, and the Inside Passage — are unsigned. The fifth, providing an aerial view of Jasper National Park, is signed Richard Rummell. Continue reading →

Land of the Totem

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Train LoverMarch 8, 2022

Located in Wrangell, the totem pole pictured on the cover of this 1926 booklet is one of the most famous in Alaska. Originally carved in 1890 and known as the Kicksetti or Kiksadi totem, it is described in detail in a 1915 book on Alaska totem poles (which is quoted on page four of today’s booklet). Sometime between 1925 and 1933, Alaska territorial governor George Parks sent a slightly smaller version of the pole to the Union Pacific Railroad, which displayed it next to the Cheyenne train station.

Click image to download an 8.0-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

In 1940, the Forest Service had Native American Civilian Conservation Corps workers restore it, which included repainting it. At that time, CCC workers carved a 6-1/2′ version of the pole and sent it to President Roosevelt. Continue reading →

Broad-Winged Hawk Dinner Menu

Posted on April 3, 2022 by Train LoverMarch 8, 2022

I don’t collect airline menus, but this one was so pretty I couldn’t resist. When Canadian Pacific Airlines wasn’t using dining car menus, which it rarely did, it usually used menus with pictures of historic airplanes on the covers. However, at some point it began putting birds on the covers.

Click image to download a 832-KB PDF of this menu.

This menu has a printer code that includes “0181,” which I interpret to mean it was printing in January 1981. The menu, which is in English, French, and German, also prominently states that it was used in “Connaiseur Service.” For at least some airlines, including rival Air Canada, this was the same as business class. The menu offered entrées of beef, pork, or meat pie, which suggests few people flying business class in 1981 were vegetarians. Continue reading →

Mediterranean Cruises Dinner Menu

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Train LoverMarch 7, 2022

This 1928 dining car menu advertises winter cruises on Canadian Pacific steamships. During the summer, those ships served the Montreal-Liverpool route, but in the winter, when that route was too icy, the ships went elsewhere. We’ve previously seen a menu advertising an around-the-world cruise; this one focuses on a cruise of the Mediterranean. The cover was painted by CP artist Gordon Fraser Gillespie.

Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu.

The back cover notes that, in both 1928 and 1929, the Mediterranean cruise would depart New York on February 4 about the Empress of Scotland. That ship was launched as the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria in 1905 by the Hamburg America line, but was taken by the allies after World War I and eventually given to Canadian Pacific. She was scrapped in 1930, so the Mediterranean cruises were among her last voyages. Continue reading →

Pacific Coast Tours

Posted on April 1, 2022 by Train LoverMarch 14, 2022

The left panel of the “cover” of this 1912 brochure shows the S.S. Princess Victoria, which served Canadian Pacific’s “triangle” between Vancouver, Victoria, and Seattle. The right panel shows Field, B.C., at the base of the one-time “big hill,” which had a 5 percent grade to the summit of the Rocky Mountains. Visible in the illustration is the large Mount Stephen House, which was originally a dining hall so CP would not have to dining cars over the steep grade, but was later expanded into a hotel. CP stopped operating it in 1918 and it was torn down in 1963.

Click image to download a 6.6-MB PDF of this brochure.

While “tours” is in the title of this brochure, it isn’t advertising guided tours but simply recommending some alternative routes and vacation spots. The routes include Crows Nest Pass between Medicine Hat and Revelstoke and taking the Canadian Pacific route from St. Paul through Crows Nest Pass to Spokane and Portland (no doubt listed to aggravate James J. Hill). The brochure also promotes all of CP’s hotels in the area, including Glacier House and the Sicamous Hotel. Like Mount Stephen House, these two didn’t last long; Glacier House was closed in 1925 and CP leased the Sicamous Hotel to other operators in around 1935.

Laurentide Park Mural Lounge Menu

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Train LoverJanuary 20, 2022

We’ve seen this cover before on a menu from the Chung collection. As I pointed out then, Canadian Pacific ordered 18 dome-observation cars from the Budd Company, each named after a national or provincial park, and decorated the interiors with paintings by a different Canadian artist. Two of the paintings were put on covers of beverage menus used in the lounges under the domes.

Click image to download an 881-KB PDF of this menu.

All of the murals themselves (except one from a car that was wrecked in 1959) were in storage in a museum, so at the time I posted the Chung menus I was unable to identify for certain which murals were on the menu covers. Based on photographs of the parks, I guessed that one was of Laurentide National Park and the other Kootenay National Park. Continue reading →

The Canadian in 1961

Posted on March 30, 2022 by Train LoverJanuary 20, 2022

Except for the cover and the date, this brochure is identical to the 1959 Canadian brochure. The cover art is in the same style as a series of booklets Canadian Pacific issued about its hotels in 1960 and 1961.

Click image to download a 4.1-MB PDF of this brochure.

These illustrations all seem to be watercolors and I can find no sign of an artist’s name on any of them. The hotel booklets have six to seven illustrations each, and it appears that only one was used in more than one brochure. Since CP had fifteen hotels at the time, it may have needed been close to a hundred different illustrations in these booklets and other advertising. I suspect they were done by an in-house artist.