More CP City Menus

Posted on by March 30, 2024
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Today’s Canadian Pacific city menus from the Chung collection fall into two groups: two have a portrait orientation and three have a landscape orientation. Two of the landscape menus continue with the archway theme that was found in several of the previous city menus.

Click image to download a 2.2-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

The first menu today features Winnipeg. Although the main illustration shows the Canadian Pacific rail yards in Winnipeg, they really could be anywhere. Smaller images show the interior of CP’s Royal Alexandra Hotel and the provincial capital. The art nouveau decoration around the archway might actually be found in a window somewhere in the world, though probably not in Winnipeg. Continue reading →

CP City Menus on a Yellow Background

Posted on by March 30, 2024
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Today’s menus from the Chung collection look different from yesterday’s, mainly because they have a yellow background instead of black. Yet like yesterday’s they each commemorate a city or, in one case, a region. While they also appear to view scenes through an archway, the window analogy breaks down because each of these show three or four different scenes.

Click image to download a 2.2-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

The first menu features Vancouver and Victoria. It shows the Hotel Vancouver on the top, Victoria’s Empress Hotel on the bottom, with two images of what are no doubt supposed to be Canadian Pacific steamships that are probably intended to illustrate the trip between Vancouver and Victoria. Continue reading →

Cities Seen Through a Window

Posted on by March 30, 2024
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In the mid-1920s, Canadian Pacific began to issue a series of menus apparently commemorating major cities (or in some cases, pairs of cities) along its route. In fact, they are actually not-so-subtle ads for Canadian Pacific operations in those cities. Most are dated 1926, but they can be from 1925 through 1928. Several use the same designs as others, but there seem to be several different basic designs. Even if the designs vary, they all seem to be part of a thematic series. The Chung collection includes a dozen menus in this series.

Click image to download a 2.2-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

With the black background and the subject painting appearing as if through a window frame, today’s three menus clearly go together. The first one shows the canal between Lake Superior and Lake Huron near Sault St. Marie, the namesake for Canadian Pacific’s subsidiary, the Soo Line. Continue reading →

Bungalow Camps and Winter Sports

Posted on by February 29, 2020
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The Chung collection menus today feature impressive paintings of sports activities in the Banff area. Two of them were painted by the same artist and could be considered the beginnings of a series. The other I’m including because it is a rare and beautiful example of a Canadian Pacific menu whose cover illustration wraps around to the back of the menu.

Click image to download a 9.1-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

This 1927 dining car breakfast menu purports to show an Indian brave paddling his canoe loaded with goods and his spouse and child. Since Canadian Pacific bungalows are visible in the distant background and advertised on the front-cover headline, this is an improbable scene (Native Americans were removed from the early Canadian parks just as they were from Yellowstone and other U.S. parks), but diners are probably supposed to imagine that they are the ones in the canoe. Continue reading →

More CP Menus from the 1920s and 1930s

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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Today we have four more menus from the Chung collection that don’t appear to be a part of any series. The last two, however, do resemble one another, but it is probably a coincidence rather than by design.

Click image to download a 3.5-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

The first menu has a black-and-white cover photo that shows a lake in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. This was a dinner menu on the Dominion; though I can’t find a date, the UBC Library thinks it was from 1927. Putting a black-and-white photo, especially one not taken by Canadian Pacific photographers, on the cover was quite a departure from the color paintings that graced most CP menus around this time. Continue reading →

CP Breakfast Menus from 1926

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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Today we have several nice menus from the Chung collection that don’t seem to be a part of any series. These are all breakfast menus dated 1926 and most of the cover illustrations are very attractive.

Click image to download a 10.1-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

The first cover shows the Crystal Garden, a combination swimming pool, café, dance, and entertainment center located near the Empress Hotel in Victoria. The menu was for a tour group from the University of Montreal and is entirely in French. Continue reading →

Early Canadian Pacific Menus

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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We start today with what may be the oldest menu in the Chung collection, one showing “Canadian National Park.” Banff National Park was created in 1885 and, according to Wikipedia, was originally called Rocky Mountains National Park. But this dining car menu appears to call it “Canadian National Park.” The menu is undated but the UBC Library thinks it is from sometime between 1890 and 1899.

Click image to download a 2.2-MB PDF of this menu. Click here to go to the web page for this item.

Inside, the left side of the lunch menu is a la carte, while the right side has a list of wines, ales, and other drinks. A cup of coffee was 10¢ while a pint of beer was 20¢ to 25¢. Continue reading →

The Chung Collection

Posted on by March 1, 2020
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As I was collecting new Canadian Pacific menus for posting here, I discovered the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, one of the best collections of digitized rail memorabilia on the web. Wallace Chung’s grandfather immigrated to Canada from China more than 100 years ago, and Madeline Chung was born in China and immigrated in 1949. So part of the collection has to do with Chinese immigration and the early history of British Columbia. They both became prominent medical doctors in Vancouver.

Most of the collection, however, has to do with the Canadian Pacific, and was inspired, Chung says in the video above, by a portrait of the steamship Empress of Asia that hung on the wall of his father’s shop in Victoria. In 1999, they donated their collection to the University of British Columbia (where Chung was chief surgeon of the medical school). Of the 25,000 pieces donated, UBC has so far digitized about 10,000 pieces, 6,700 of which have to do with Canadian Pacific. Continue reading →

What to Do at Lake Louise

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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This 1927 booklet tells of hikes, climbs, horseback rides, and scenic motorcar tours from Lake Louise. A centerfold map shows a trail network through the mountains to other lakes in the area. Canadian Pacific also had three tearooms, three bungalow camps, and an alpine hut for hikers.

Click image to download a 9.1-MB PDF of this 32-page booklet.

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Canadian National Menu Series

Posted on by March 12, 2020
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Canadian National didn’t issue as many menus as Canadian Pacific and I haven’t tried to collect all of the ones it did issue. Many of the ones I have seem to fall into several series, though like Canadian Pacific menus the series aren’t as sharply defined as menus from U.S. railroads.

First are the Jasper Lodge menu cards, of which scores must have been issued over the several decades they were used. Many photos were used for several years in a row, but the menu designs changed a little from year to year. In at least some years, the lunch and dinner menus were dated but breakfast were not, and I have three breakfast menus from one year that is probably in the early 1930s.

In the early 1940s, some dining car menus had a color photo on top with the word “Menu” and other decorations on top. Later, the photo dropped down to the middle of the cover. In the late 1940s, the photo menus were splashed with institutional green. My dining car menus from the 1950s are so different from one another that it is hard to call any of them a series. Continue reading →