It was, to simplify, a time of precarity. It wasn’t until 1969 that Canada’s Criminal Code was reformed, decriminalizing homosexual acts in private (as then-Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau famously put it, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”), though with a deliberately broad understanding of what counts as public. Not long before that, of course, Dr. Frank Robert Wake at Carleton University was conducting the “fruit machine” psychological tests for identifying gay people and keeping them out of public service and public life.
In 1965, within this pre-liberation environment, 22-year-old David Secter, a student at the University of Toronto, directed what is now known as English Canada’s first feature film to deal with queer themes: Winter Kept Us Warm. This is a lot of baggage for such a small, tender film to carry, yet it continues to ably bear it, 60 years later.
"This is a lot of baggage for such a small, tender film to carry, yet it continues to ably bear it, 60 years later."
Although the film has recently enjoyed a renewal in interest (including a new restoration on the festival circuit and a book last year by Chris Dupuis for McGill-Queen’s University Press’ Queer Film Classics series), scholars like Thomas Waugh have noted that it languished for decades in near-obscurity, as homophobia contributed to it being left out of popular resources like the Canadian Film Reader. Despite its limited distribution in the ‘60s, it did make initial waves, particularly internationally at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was the first English Canadian film to screen there (and it is said to be that festival’s first-ever queer film), announcing Canada not only as a cinematic industry worth paying attention to but one concerned with queer themes at a time when many countries, including Canada itself, still deemed homosexuality illegal.
Winter Kept Us Warm is, in many ways, a typical coming-of-age college-set film. Peter (Henry Tarvainen), a freshman, and Doug (John Labow), a sophomore, meet first as the latter and his frat bro friends tease the former while he’s working in the dining hall. Not the sweetest meet-cute, but soon enough, they run into each other again in the library; Doug apologizes, and a friendship forms. Peter invites Doug to his room for Finnish pastries; Doug invites Peter to his room to listen to a record; desire stirs.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the film, from a certain angle, is its frank matter-of-factness. While the desire between them is not exactly consummated or even spoken of directly, it is palpable. The real tension between them emerges not due to the nature of their queer feelings and whether society can accept it or not, but for a much simpler, even universal reason: Peter begins a relationship with someone else, a woman, and Doug feels spurned. This is not exactly an uncommon trope for queer films in the following years, but here, something about how it is treated like a regular love triangle, with complicating factors largely unremarked upon, makes it feel far more tangible, more credible.
It would be easy enough to say that this attitude is revolutionary in itself. This is true. But it’s also somehow reductive, since it belies the film’s unassuming nature as a key part of its emotional effectiveness. The story goes that some of the actors weren’t even aware that the film had queer themes at all. This may seem hard to believe, but it would validate the trust Secter had to make these desires so deeply felt, regardless of the time and place it was formed inside. This is why it’s ahead of its time in many ways, and yet perfectly timeless, too. (Fun fact: Saturday Night Live founder Lorne Michaels was initially cast in a lead role, but eventually dropped out.)
David Cronenberg, a fellow student at the time of the film’s release, famously said that this and Secter’s follow-up, The Offering (1966), about an interracial romance, are the films that inspired him to make movies. It is also a clear triumph of independent filmmaking and making the most of meagre resources. The black-and-white photography is lush, making you yearn for college life in the 1960s, and while some of the acting and editing are rough, it is also a testament to how even these elements become tools for Secter to emphasize that these characters are relatable, authentic people.
What may resonate most with viewers today is how straightforwardly it captures, on one level, the pain of repressed desire, but also on a broader scale, the messiness of desire itself. Doug and Peter may be repressed in some way due to circumstance, but when Doug comes to a boiling point of jealousy over Peter's female partner, it is quite powerfully from a sense of emotional betrayal rather than, say, an acquiescence to societal “norms”.
At this moment, he makes intimate physical contact with Peter, by kneeing him in the balls—a clear message that he feels misled or at least abandoned, maybe partly seething at the subdued nature of their desire for each other and how easy it is for Peter to consummate his feelings with a woman, but more importantly, he is quite simply furious on the level of pure heartbreak. And we’ve all felt that.
It was, to simplify, a time of precarity. It wasn’t until 1969 that Canada’s Criminal Code was reformed, decriminalizing homosexual acts in private (as then-Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau famously put it, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”), though with a deliberately broad understanding of what counts as public. Not long before that, of course, Dr. Frank Robert Wake at Carleton University was conducting the “fruit machine” psychological tests for identifying gay people and keeping them out of public service and public life.
In 1965, within this pre-liberation environment, 22-year-old David Secter, a student at the University of Toronto, directed what is now known as English Canada’s first feature film to deal with queer themes: Winter Kept Us Warm. This is a lot of baggage for such a small, tender film to carry, yet it continues to ably bear it, 60 years later.
"This is a lot of baggage for such a small, tender film to carry, yet it continues to ably bear it, 60 years later."
Although the film has recently enjoyed a renewal in interest (including a new restoration on the festival circuit and a book last year by Chris Dupuis for McGill-Queen’s University Press’ Queer Film Classics series), scholars like Thomas Waugh have noted that it languished for decades in near-obscurity, as homophobia contributed to it being left out of popular resources like the Canadian Film Reader. Despite its limited distribution in the ‘60s, it did make initial waves, particularly internationally at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was the first English Canadian film to screen there (and it is said to be that festival’s first-ever queer film), announcing Canada not only as a cinematic industry worth paying attention to but one concerned with queer themes at a time when many countries, including Canada itself, still deemed homosexuality illegal.
Winter Kept Us Warm is, in many ways, a typical coming-of-age college-set film. Peter (Henry Tarvainen), a freshman, and Doug (John Labow), a sophomore, meet first as the latter and his frat bro friends tease the former while he’s working in the dining hall. Not the sweetest meet-cute, but soon enough, they run into each other again in the library; Doug apologizes, and a friendship forms. Peter invites Doug to his room for Finnish pastries; Doug invites Peter to his room to listen to a record; desire stirs.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the film, from a certain angle, is its frank matter-of-factness. While the desire between them is not exactly consummated or even spoken of directly, it is palpable. The real tension between them emerges not due to the nature of their queer feelings and whether society can accept it or not, but for a much simpler, even universal reason: Peter begins a relationship with someone else, a woman, and Doug feels spurned. This is not exactly an uncommon trope for queer films in the following years, but here, something about how it is treated like a regular love triangle, with complicating factors largely unremarked upon, makes it feel far more tangible, more credible.
It would be easy enough to say that this attitude is revolutionary in itself. This is true. But it’s also somehow reductive, since it belies the film’s unassuming nature as a key part of its emotional effectiveness. The story goes that some of the actors weren’t even aware that the film had queer themes at all. This may seem hard to believe, but it would validate the trust Secter had to make these desires so deeply felt, regardless of the time and place it was formed inside. This is why it’s ahead of its time in many ways, and yet perfectly timeless, too. (Fun fact: Saturday Night Live founder Lorne Michaels was initially cast in a lead role, but eventually dropped out.)
David Cronenberg, a fellow student at the time of the film’s release, famously said that this and Secter’s follow-up, The Offering (1966), about an interracial romance, are the films that inspired him to make movies. It is also a clear triumph of independent filmmaking and making the most of meagre resources. The black-and-white photography is lush, making you yearn for college life in the 1960s, and while some of the acting and editing are rough, it is also a testament to how even these elements become tools for Secter to emphasize that these characters are relatable, authentic people.
What may resonate most with viewers today is how straightforwardly it captures, on one level, the pain of repressed desire, but also on a broader scale, the messiness of desire itself. Doug and Peter may be repressed in some way due to circumstance, but when Doug comes to a boiling point of jealousy over Peter's female partner, it is quite powerfully from a sense of emotional betrayal rather than, say, an acquiescence to societal “norms”.
At this moment, he makes intimate physical contact with Peter, by kneeing him in the balls—a clear message that he feels misled or at least abandoned, maybe partly seething at the subdued nature of their desire for each other and how easy it is for Peter to consummate his feelings with a woman, but more importantly, he is quite simply furious on the level of pure heartbreak. And we’ve all felt that.