Drive Back Home: New feature film showcases family dynamics and queer NB history

Drive Back Home, the first film by Nashwaaksis-born film maker Michael Clowater, premiered in New Brunswick at the 14th Annual Silverwave Film Festival on November 7.

Inspired by family lore, the film was crowned “Best Feature Film” for the festival, receiving positive response from the audience after the screening.

Clowater was inspired by family members’ stories of Ernest Clowater, his crumdgeony grandfather, and Hedley Clowater, Ernest’s brother (the filmmaker’s great-uncle). Though the filmmaker was never able to meet his grandfather, he had been told a story about Ernest driving the approximate 763 km in the 1960s to retrieve his brother after he had been picked up for cruising in a Montreal Park.

Clowater was fascinated by the brothers’ dynamic, their understanding of one another (or at times the lack thereof) and of society’s view of gay men at that time, when institutions, like law enforcement, were focused on humiliating gay men by having close family members, employers or a spouse pick them up following arrests for gross indecency.

While inspired by these true events, Clowater took creative license with his film, changing locations, names, and events, to explore the pairs’ return trip to New Brunswick.

Drive Back Home opens in late fall in the small village of Stanley, the home of the Hinson family, located 30 kilometres north of Fredericton. The film follows plumber Weldon Hinson, played by Charlie Creed-Miles (Peaky Blinders, Wild Bill), on his snowy journey to retrieve his gay brother, Perley Hinson Jr., played by the fabulous Alan Cumming (The Traitors, The Good Wife).

The brothers travel from Toronto at their mother’s insistence (played spectacularly by Clare Coulter). The film chronicles the bond forged between brothers as they reconnect while facing a multitude of challenges, including brief imprisonment, car failures, homophobic attacks and surviving on basic French in Quebec. All this while being accompanied by a silent witness: Perley’s treasured, deceased and taxidermied pug.

In an opening scene, the youngest brother, Moses Hinson (played by Gray Powell), gives a vivid account of their father, the late Perley Hinson Sr., and his knack for toughness and cruelty. He offers a brief story by way of a eulogy at his father’s funeral, describing how Perley Sr. forced Moses to keep a rod still with his bare hands while it was soddered, hot metal dripping on to the young boys’ hands and leaving permanent scares. “Dad taught us one thing,” Moses states, “Don’t Wobble.”

This moment offers some foreshadowing, as Perley Jr.’s narrative arch certainly fills in the gaps of what it was like if you did “wobble,” show signs of weakness or deviate from the path.

It is a long-established trope that to be gay in New Brunswick is considered impossible and that to survive you must leave this place. This, however, discounts the work of many generations of queer New Brunswickers who fought for equal rights.

Clowater’s choice to set this film in 1970 isn’t a coincidence and shows a very real situation that occurred throughout Canada. The 1969 Criminal Code Reforms only made exceptions for buggery and gross indecency and did not repeal them outright. The acts could only take place between two same-sex people over the age of 21 and, crucially, the acts must take place in private.

With social stigma towards queer people rife, let’s not forget that, prior to the human rights protections of 1992, a queer person could lose their job, family and housing if their sexuality was discovered. Within this environment, many men like Perley turned to cruising and risked arrest simply to find intimacy and to meet people.

To depict this history, Clowater sought assistance while writing the plot from the ArQuives (Canada’s LGBTQ+ Archives in Toronto) and Canadian queer historian Tom Hooper, who was a leader the 2019 “Anti-’69 Campaign” to stop misinformation around the Government of Canada’s commemoration of the “decriminalization” of homosexuality and the Criminal Code Reform. The attention to historical reality allows for the film to strike a strong cord with viewers, as it offers an emotionally rich exploration of events that likely occurred frequently during this timeframe.

The threat and reality of violence and shunning perpetuated by law enforcement, one’s own family and community members towards a gay person is a common occurrence. Sadly, this experience is not confined to the 1970s, but is still ongoing. Viewers need not turn farther than Marcus McCann’s book Park Cruising (2023) to learn about Toronto Police’s crack down on cruising in Marie Curtis Park in 2016.

In handling the violent altercations in the film, Clowater does a good job of depicting the initial incident between Perley Hinson Sr. & Jr., that led to Perley Jr.’s escape from New Brunswick; however, his decision to make the hyper-dramatic, western-style homophobic violence faced by the Hinson brothers in some places felt gratuitous.

Alan Cumming’s depiction of Perley jr. is well-acted and he captures the Toronto-living, flamboyant, gay bachelor-uncle well. Likewise, Reed-Miles’ mirroring of a New Brunswicker, including accent, clothing and stance is spot on.

Sadly, Northern Ontario is used as a geographic stand in for New Brunswick, and this film should be a wake-up call to the Provincial Government that the increased film production tax incentive supports for our film industry is sorely needed. We need to keep telling our stories in this place.

While this movie is important as it shows the history of gay New Brunswickers who fled unhappy home lives for the big city, Clowater also wanted to tell a tale of brothers who can’t quite figure each other out. Much of the film focuses on their developing understanding of each other. The movie poster captures this quite well and is a cheeky nod perhaps to both Perley’s and Weldon’s hot headedness, not to mention radiator issues encountered on the trip.

This film comes at an important juncture surrounding our history of acceptance of queer people in this province, or lack thereof, by looking to the past for a narrative of a gay person needing to leave home as well as centering the struggles that families face with acceptance and homophobia when a family member is gay. Viewers should take heart in the film’s depiction of this history and reflect on what questions it asks about our present.

Drive Back Home will be showing at the Fredericton Cineplex until December 19th and a future release on Crave is expected.

Meredith J. Batt is co-author of Len & Cub: A Queer History and a founder of the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick, which aims to preserve records of 2SLGBTQ+ New Brunswickers. They are a writer, archivist and historian based in Fredericton.