Canadian Pacific issued more menus than any other North American railroad. One reason for this was that it had menus for its hotels, steamships, station restaurants, and later airplanes as well as trains. But even just the dining car menus were far more numerous than Canadian National or any railroad in the U.S. other than Union Pacific. I’ve identified at least 225 unique menu covers, and there are many I don’t have.
Because there are so many, I’ve divided them into three groups. After 1935, the most common menu covers had a color painting or photo on a white (or, briefly, solid-colored) background. I call these the “white menus.” All dining car menus before 1935, and a few after, fell into many different series that together I call the “non-white menus.” This page shows the white menus, including hotel and a handful of airline menus.
Canadian Pacific steamships used some menus that were also used on dining cars but many that were not. Steamship menus that would never have been seen on dining cars are shown on their own page. Some steamship menus will be on this page and the non-white menus page because menus of the same design could have been seen on dining cars.
A few of these menus are from the Chung Collection, in which case clicking on the image goes to that menu’s page on the University of British Columbia’s web site. Otherwise, clicking on an image downloads a PDF of the menu represented by that image. Click on the text beneath the image to go to a description of that menu. Menu PDFs are mostly between 1 and 3 megabytes. Dates ending in a 0 or 5 may be approximate.
