A seven-part limited series
The Canadian soldiers who put on a dress, and the law that was waiting for them.
Created by Daniela Barbosa
A Wet Nose Films production
Based on the research of Sarah Worthman
In the shadows of the Great War, queer people fought, loved and created, risking everything to be seen in a world that criminalised them.
In April 1917, a stretcher bearer from Pugwash, Nova Scotia built a dress out of tent canvas, old curtains, pillow feathers and rosary beads, and became Marjorie.
The Canadian Army loved her. Officers posed with her. Army photographers shot her. She was paraded past cheering troops on a wagon and headlined the London Coliseum. And the whole time, under the same Army's regulations, the men in the audience could be court-martialled for who they loved.
In the Trenches is about that contradiction, and about the people on both sides of it. All of them were real. Most of them you have never heard of.
No. 9 Field Ambulance, CEF · reg. 530643 · 1892 to 1965
Stretcher bearer. Created the drag persona Marjorie in April 1917 and headlined the Dumbells through the London Coliseum in 1918 and Broadway in 1921. Re-enlisted in the Second World War and was discharged for “reasons other than medical.” Spent the rest of his life in a cabin near Truro, gardening and volunteering at the local theatre.
35th Battalion, YMCA · Orillia, Ontario · 1888 to 1966
The entertainment officer who formed the 3rd Division's concert party near Vimy in 1917 and ran it as managing director and comedian. Showman and fixer. The man who decided what the Army was allowed to see, and who put Marjorie in front of the entire Canadian Corps.
Nursing sisters, CAMC · met 1915, Netheravon House
Life partners who served together through the war. Gas exposure in 1917 left Parker with permanent lung damage. They spent the rest of their lives together and are buried side by side. Parker wrote poetry about the men she treated; her manuscript “Vimy” survives in the Royal BC Archives.
8th Battalion · enlisted at 16 · 1900 to 1917
Arrested in a hop field near Abeele in July 1916 and sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour. Released early because Vimy had left the line short of men. Killed at Hill 70 six weeks later, aged seventeen. No known grave. His name is on the Vimy Memorial.
Alexander McKenzie · Sylvio Rousseau · Laura Holland · Mildred Forbes · Jo Whitehead · Hugh Pope-Hennessy · Samuel Harding · Charles McDonell
Each one navigating service, identity and survival. Alexander McKenzie, like Hardy, was punished under these laws, sent back to the line, and killed in action in 1917.
A comic chase in drag opens the story, then back to the start of the war and Ross's first meeting with Plunkett.
Ross carries the wounded at the front and finds a stage; Ellanore and Murney build a life inside the hospital wards.
From the Somme to the stages of London, performance becomes both escape and resistance.
Concert tours, a club raid, Hardy's court martial, Ellanore's gassing: choices that change everything.
A final Christmas gathering, and what courage, identity and friendship actually survive.
Queer history as prestige limited series. The audience and the awards appetite are proven.
Four Academy Awards. The First World War travels, and it travels big.
Queer WWI through a poet's life. Our closest tonal cousin.
The nursing-sister war, in the register of Ellanore and Murney.
The Canadian precedent: a homegrown wartime ensemble with a queer lead.
$225,000
Development financing · plus a Canadian broadcaster letter of interest
To deliver the series bible and the pilot script.
Built to CMF Development guidelines: 50% of eligible costs to a $200,000 cap, against a broadcaster development fee.
Shopping agreement in negotiation with Sarah Worthman for Queering the Western Front: her manuscript, research files and archival citations. Option and purchase terms pre-agreed, exercisable on close of development financing.
To be cleared separately with Library and Archives Canada and the Royal BC Archives. Budgeted in development.
The series is based on the research of Sarah Worthman: Queering the Western Front, her work on LGBTQ2S+ Canadians who served in the First World War, supported by the LGBT Purge Fund. Service records, court-martial files and photographs are held by Library and Archives Canada and the Royal BC Archives.
These people are not composites. The records exist. queeringww1.ca
Wet Nose Films
Daniela Barbosa · Creator and Producer
Twenty years as a 1st Assistant Director · DGC and DGA
info@wetnosefilms.ca · 416.303.0090