Welcome to the austere 1940s: Your guide to Episode 1
Air date: Thursday June 14 at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT) on CBC | Watch full episode »
In Episode 1 of Back in Time For Dinner, the Campus family meet host Carlo Rota and begin their time-travelling adventure in the 1940s. They experience wartime rationing, strict gender roles in the home, technology-free entertainment and a diet lacking in the diversity of food that they are used to.
Tristan is suddenly responsible for all of the domestic duties — which took '40s housewives an average of 85 hours per week — and she must tackle them without the help of electric appliances like her trusty dishwasher.
Her daughters Valerie and Jessica are expected to help with the workload, so instead of spending hours on their phones after school, the 1940s finds them doing laundry by hand, grinding meat for dinner and rendering fat for the war effort.
Husband Aaron keeps clear of the kitchen, which is a jarring change from his role as the family chef in 2018.
Son Robert has to figure out how to entertain himself without a trace of modern technology and a very hungry stomach.
Wartime means government-enforced food rations and sacrifice on the home front. But while the Campuses struggle with the confines of the past, they also delight in the slower pace of a tech-free life.
What was happening in Canada during the 1940s?
In the 1940s, English Canadians begin to see themselves as more than British subjects living in an outpost of the British Empire, but as citizens of an independent nation. But with a huge landmass and a tiny population, the federal government will need to centralize planning for everything from immigration to food production.
What's happening to the family? Women and kids get to work
With so many men fighting in Europe, the number of Canadian women with jobs outside the home doubles. They work in factories and shipyards, making the weapons used by their fathers and brothers overseas and the boats that take them there.
With dad overseas and mom at the factory, many Canadian children come home to empty houses for the first time. These kids are given a name: "latch-key kids" for the house keys that many of them wore on strings around their necks.
What's happening in the kitchen?
Canada has a big role in keeping both its own and the British armed forces well fed. As the "Breadbasket of the Empire," more than three-quarters of Britain's wheat comes from Canadian fields.
On the home front, however, the pickings are pretty slim. All that food going overseas means rationing back at home.
Looking ahead: What does the end of the war mean for Canada?
A new prosperity and many, many babies. With the troops coming home, couples across the country were reunited, sometimes after years of separation. Combine that with a prosperous post-war economy (and lack of reliable birth control), and you get a massive spike in the birth rate. In 1937, Canada's live birth rate was 20.1 per 1,000. In 1946, it jumped to 27.2 and stayed around that until 1959.
This Baby Boom generation would be the largest in Canada's history, and would shape the country for decades to come.