Browse Items (1397 total)

This attractive brochure emphasized the CPR’s three-million–acre irrigation block, located east of Calgary. Begun in the 1890s during a period of dry years, the scheme involved a series of canals that brought water to farms in the region,…

This item was produced for the fiftieth anniversary of Canada’s first transcontinental passenger train journey. Though the last spike was driven on 7 November 1885, the winter and ongoing repairs to the track delayed the first cross-Canada trip.…

The Canadian Northern Railway grew swiftly from its creation in 1899 to its nationalization in 1918. In the same vein as the Grand Trunk’s Bread: Terse Stories of Success, the company published The Key to Prosperity in the Bread Basket of the…

This elegantly designed menu from approximately 1928 features a delightful poem about the joys of riding on the Canadian National Railway. Much of it concerns food: If you follow the magic carpet‘Twill lead to a fairy car,Where all things good…

Medicine Hat had a vibrant Jewish community: although it numbered only about forty families, their impact on city life was substantial. As S.M. Selchen wrote in the Canadian Jewish Chronicle in 1954, “This tiny Jewish island among a non-Jewish…

Children’s cookbooks tend to emphasize desserts, as is especially clear in the Kids Cookbook produced by the Calgary Public Library. Children submitted their favourite recipes in this juvenile community cookbook: the results include brownies,…

This book's title and cover image suggest that the photographs found within conform to the conventions of the picturesque—though the photographs that follow do not all fit easily within this aesthetic category. The photographer who took these…

Kodachrome was one of the first widely-used colour films, introduced by the Eastman Kodak Company in 1935. Here, Kodachrome film was used to create colourful pictures of the Canadian Rockies. Printed as postcards, the pictures were sold as souvenirs…

P. Burns and Co. was a large Prairie abattoir and packing-plant company. Established by Pat Burns in 1890 in Calgary, the company soon expanded to Vancouver and Edmonton, and changed its name to Burns and Co. in 1923. Though Burns and Co. specialized…

Printed and bound, title is written on two lines: Clea and Rsky, or Clear Sky. Full colour photographs of various shades of blue. Signed on the back.