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KP: I kind of like the character that I'm playing, just because he has such an incredibly interesting sort of past as a man who left the priesthood, became a teacher, got married, and tried to do all those sorts of things that priests miss in their lives. I like him for that. And I like him for the fact that he has some conscience and some sensibility.

FH: His conscience is very obvious.

KP: I think in a way, it's what drives him back, why he takes a tour into the north with the first natives, the first nations people. I think it's probably something he's been curious about for a long, long time. To see them on their own ground. Because the only time he knew them before was in schools.

FH: I watched part of a documentary a few years ago called "God's Explorers" that was about the Oblates [of Mary Immaculate] in the north, and their profound sense of loss, having built their lives for God and for the people, and their really clear intention in their own minds to do right by the people and make them part of the world. At the time, they truly believed that what they were doing was the right thing.

KP: It's a missionary force in the world, and that's not necessarily a good force. I think with regard to the natives, it was absolutely the worst direction to go in. Yes, missionary settlements have worked all over the world, and there's all kinds of people that can be converted. But I think the native spirit is so strong that they [the missionaries] were going about things the wrong way.

PW: Does it come out in the movie why he leaves the priesthood?

KP: No, those things are never explored. Nor his marriage, or his time teaching school, or any of those things. So you kind of build a complex character out of very little. You kind of have to assimilate it.

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