Two historians of 20th century domesticity in Canada give you the dish on CBC’s Back in Time for Dinner.
Image courtesy of CBC.
Note from Andrea: You knew I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk about the new show from CBC, Back in Time for Dinner, where one family will experience what life was like over the course of decades, from the 1940s to the 2000s. As some of you may be aware, my actual research focuses, among other things, on domestic life. And of course, I had to ask Kesia Kvill to be a part of this, since she has extensive experience as a historical interpreter for the period in question (she has actually used a wringer washer, folks!). The show will air for a total of six weeks, starting on June 14th., and airs on Thursday nights at 8 pm EST/11 pm PST. We will be posting our reviews for the previous week’s episode on Thursday at 1 pm EST/10 am PST, so that you have enough time to catch up before the next episode airs. Both of us will provide individual reviews (and sometimes even Lee will comment!), followed by a short (possibly silly) discussion and a short list of recommended readings at the end. So without any further ado, enjoy this special summer-time series, starting with the 1940s.
Andrea’s Review
When I first found out about the Canadian version of “Back in Time for Dinner,” I was super excited. Not to put too fine a point a point on it, but I consider myself an expert in these kinds of television shows. Not only have I seen all of the British “time capsule” shows (Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm, Tudor Monastery Farm, including the Christmas specials and the American version, Frontier House), but I also watched The 1900s House and The 1940s House waaaay back in the day, as well as the CBC’s version, Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West. Yes, I am both that old and that dorky. Anyhoo, I was really excited to see a uniquely Canadian version. As anyone who has ever tried to teach Canadian history, American and British portrayals are so ubiquitous that many Canadians assume our experience was no different.
I went into this with medium-high hopes. The British shows in particular have been quite well researched and fairly nuanced for television shows. The “Farm” series even featured actual archaeologists and experts as the main characters. However, I was also expecting to see the standard tropes that go along with this style of television show: we need to reconnect with our food sources, disconnecting from computer screens is a good thing, and modern families need to spend more time together.
My first impressions were fairly positive. Carlo Rota, the host, could talk me into anything (take me now!). The recreated kitchen looked super cool, as did the outfits that the family members were given. But things went pretty downhill from there.
First of all, one of the characteristics of each of these shows is that they explain (in detail) the mechanics of how the experience will work. We are usually introduced to a group of around one to three academic experts. The host then gives the audience a tour of the house, as well as an explanation of the specific challenges each family member will face, while also explaining how food will be obtained and the rules to be followed when the family is outside of the house. None of this happened. Rota basically just gave them a manual and then vanished, like a 1940s fairy godmother.
Second, as far as I could tell, the show relied on mainstream media from the 1940s to provide a guide on appropriate behaviour. There were numerous clips that I recognized from the CBC Digital Archive, as well as the NFB. For instance, it is made quite clear at the beginning that “men do not belong in the kitchen,” intercut with scenes of father and son playing darts and cards. Tristan, the mother, appears to be a prisoner of the kitchen, churning out beige food for her family, with the help of her two daughters, while wearing really uncomfortable shoes, albeit with fabulous hair. Except we know that life in the 1940s was not quite so simple. Groundbreaking research by Veronica Strong-Boag, Valerie Korinek, and Joy Parr has proven that these ideals did not necessarily reflect reality. For instance, men could and did prepare meals and assist with domestic tasks throughout the entire postwar period.
There were additional historical inaccuracies and omissions that I found particularly troubling. For instance, Rota mentions that only 27% of Canadian families from the period had access to electric stoves. Which begs the question: why was the family provided with one then? The use of the washboard in particular was incorrect, since electric wringer washers were widely available even in the 1930s, and most middle class families would have had access to one. Finally, the video clips shown in the section on Victory Gardens looked more like footage of the Soldiers of the Soil and Farmerette programs (don’t quote me on this though). There was little to no discussion about the issue of race and ethnicity, and how these aspects would have affected domestic life. But most troubling of all, Rota mentions the Canada Food Rules (later the Canada Food Guide), and mentions that these were developed to assist families in getting proper nutrition. But the fact that the Canada Food Guide was developed through experiments performed on Indigenous children at residential schools (as Ian Mosby has proved) was never mentioned.
To be fair, there were numerous aspects of the show that I felt were handled very well. The domestic burden placed on Tristan in particular was, I thought, very well handled. I also really appreciated the short discussion of class privilege and gender norms. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but the focus on the son saying, right after one of his sisters got up to get him seconds at dinner, “Can we stay in the 1940s? I like this,” felt, to me at least, a pointed commentary on current discourse with respect to gender.
But overall, I was left with the conclusion that the show was as bland and beige as the food Tristan served for dinner. We’ll see what the 1950s has in store…
Kesia’s Review
Real wringer washers!
Having recently watched the most recent BBC show “Back in Time for Tea” which explored the food and lifestyle of a Northern British working-class family from post-WWI to the 1990s, my hopes were decently high for the Canadian version. It has been my dream to work for a show like this and to make people eat food that I am far too chicken to try. (I have spent the majority of my adult life working to be Ruth Goodman from Victorian Farm…) The first episode had some downright hilarious moments, but the so far the series has left me, like Andrea, feeling a bit underwhelmed.
I agree, the kitchen (and clothes) were fantastic and everything and everyone looked the part. Unfortunately, much of the living space was just too big, and nothing seems to have been done to address that. I’ve worked in several pre-1940s kitchens and have visited a few historic houses set in the 1940s (not to mention my grandparents’ 1945 bungalow) and none of them had that much work, pantry, and cupboard space. Especially built in. Why not shrink down the living space a bit to make the floor plan a bit more realistic to an average middle-class family? How could they afford such great new items right out of the Depression?
This brings me to another issue – where the hell are they? The CBC website clearly states the family is in Mississauga, but they seem to have missed this on the show. The context of place matters a great deal in this period, as Southern Ontario towns like Mississauga would have experienced the war in a different way than Vancouver or Calgary. The fact that the family is urban and middle class matters a great deal, and they certainly did a decent job addressing the importance of class privilege, particularly after the family received a refrigerator. However, the urban setting seems to be entirely unexamined. Ruth Sandwell and other rural historians have made the point that a majority of Canada’s population lived in rural areas in the 1940s. Given that the majority of Canadians lived in rural areas, and that rural electrification didn’t truly begin in Canada until the late 1940s, perhaps we can explain the electric stove being present in the kitchen by relating the statistic to them being part of the minority urban population?
I think that the lack of historians, who are prevalent on British reality TV shows like the ones Andrea mentioned (the Farm series in particular), is the main issue with this show. Besides not mentioning the racial issues surrounding the development of the Canada Food Guide, the show suffers from a lack of nuance and the family from a lack of guidance. In the British show the guide/source book features very prominently and food and social historian Polly Russell goes through it with the family at the beginning of each decade. The book features social statistics and important cultural context as well as the recipes the women will be making for the week. In addition, the family receives a dossier at the start of each new year to explain some of the changes that have happened to their kitchen within the decade. This background information adds so much to not only the family’s experience of each decade, but allows the audience to more fully understand how things like employment, government programs, and current events have an impact on the food that makes it to the kitchen table.
Finally, I do have to commend the show advisors for their selection of recipes and Tristan for her willingness to cook so many unfamiliar things when she is clearly not the cook in her modern family. The main themes of food rationing were nicely incorporated by selecting kidney and creamed celery on toast to show how every part of the animal was used and also featured a meatless meal that used “Victory Garden” vegetables. Tristan in particular really understood the importance of not wasting food and eating what was available. I think if the show had started with the 1920s and gone through the 1930s, or if they had provided more context, then the family and audience may have more fully understood the impact of rationing on the overall nutrition and health of the Canadian population (again, shout out to Ian Mosby’s great research).
The feature of a gelatin dessert as part of the post-war meal was a particularly good choice. (I am still baffled at how someone whipping cream by hand can end up at butter. I’ve done it by hand and there is no way I would have the stamina to get that far!) The family, Aaron in particular, really got that a moulded jelly was not just a dessert but demonstrated to consumers the social status of its maker and represented the novelty of new technology. I think that the idea of novelty foods will likely be a main feature of the 1950s episode.
The CBC article “About Back in Time for Dinner and the Campus Family” calls the show “Evocative, nostalgic and rich with detail.” It’s certainly the first two.
Discussion
Kesia: Omg the butter in the desert. Whyyyyyyy. How does one over-whip cream when you do it by hand?
Andrea: I have no idea. She totally made butter, didn’t she?
K: 100% butter. My other favourite moment was realizing they had to do laundry.
A: Wouldn’t they have had access to a proper electric wringer washer by this point?
K: 100% they would have. Especially as urban middle-class. Even possibly a motorized Maytag. I’ve used a really nice one from the 1930s.
A: With an agitator tub, right?
K: Yep. I had one that was just with the handle and another that had been converted to a motor.
K: My mom’s comment about the food: she thinks a lot of what her family ate growing up was informed by the food in the 1940s. Her mom was in her early 20s during WWII and it clearly had an impact on her cooking for the rest of her life.
A: I think that’s a fantastic point about why it’s problematic when we divide history up into arbitrary periods. I know my mother still cooks the same recipes she ate as a child.
Lee’s Dish: The 1940s were tough, but they’re even tougher when you don’t have an understanding of historical gender roles.
Recommended Readings: General
- Tarah Brookfield, Cold War Comforts: Canadian Women, Child Safety, and Global Insecurity, 1945-1975 (Waterloo: WLUP, 2012).
- Mona Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling, and the Family in Postwar Canada (Toronto: UTP, 1999).
- Peter Gossage, “On Dads and Damages: Looking for the ‘Priceless Child’ and the ‘Manly Modern’ in Quebec’s Civil Courts,” Social History 49, no. 100 (November 2016): 603-623.
- Franca Iacovetta, Marlene Epp, Valerie Korinek, eds., Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History (Toronto: UTP, 2012).
- Valerie Korinek, Roughing It in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties (Toronto: UTP, 2000).
- Stéphanie O’Neill, “Le soleil de la prospérité actuelle ne luit pas pour tout le monde ‘: les exclus de la société de consommation à Montréal, 1945-1975,” Revue d’histoire de L’Amerique francaise 70, no. 4 (Printemps 2017): 55-70.
- Joy Parr, Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral, and the Economic in the Postwar Years (Toronto: UTP, 1999).
- Robert Rutherdale and Magda Fahrni, eds. Creating Postwar Canada: Community, Diversity, Dissent, 1945-75 (Vancouver: UBCP, 2008).
- Joan Sangster, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada (Toronto: UTP, 2010).
- Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada, 1945-60,” The Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (December 1991): 471-504.
Recommended Readings: the 1940s
- Magda Fahrni, Household Politics: Montreal Families and Postwar Reconstruction (Toronto: UTP, 2005).
- Ian Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952” Histoire sociale/Social History XLVI, 91 (Mai/May 2013), 615-642.
- Ian Mosby, Food Will Win the War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).
- Jeff Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada’s Second World War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007).
- Ruth Sandwell, ed. Canada’s Rural Majority: Households, Environments and Economies, 1870-1940 (Toronto: UTP, 2016).
- Ruth Sandwell, The History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 (Montreal: MQUP, 2016).
- Jennifer Stephen, “Balancing Equality for the Postwar Woman: Demobilising Canada’s Women Workers after World War Two,” Atlantis 32, no. 1 (September 2007): 122-132.
Kesia Kvill is a PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph. Her dissertation focusses on food control in Canada during the First World War and the relationship between government and women. She received her MA from the University of Calgary where she wrote about public dining and Western Canadian identity. Kesia’s research interests include food, cultural, rural, gender, domestic, and public history. She also maintains a personal food history research blog, Potatoes, Rhubarb, and Ox.
We hope you enjoyed this special review post! I know that Kesia and I had a great deal of fun watching the show and writing this review. If you did enjoy it, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice, and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Stephanie’s list of upcoming publications! See you then!
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