Trivia

Features readings from [link=nm0785827 poems "The Men That Don't Fit In," "Clancy of the Mounted Police," and "The Land of Beyond."

The cast includes Earl Pastko as Olaf, a Russian Orthodox priest of dubious character, Jessica Paré as Amethyst, Olaf's scarred daughter, as well as George Buza, Tony Munch, Matthew G. Taylor, and Andrew W. Walker. Though drawing on elements of Canadian northern genre fiction, the film was pitched as a neo-spaghetti Western by Clarkson to its star, Andrew W. Walker.

Walker plays a disgraced North-West Mounted Police officer dispatched in 1894 to survey the Yukon for a new garrison, where he encounters a small group of Russian settlers in a town in desperate need of law and order.

Principal photography took place on a remote location west of Whitehorse, Yukon, in 2009, under the working title "Red Coat Justice." The shooting location was a 45-minute drive for the cast and crew to a logging road, followed by a 30-minute hike to the set itself. Clarkson said he felt "budgetary pressure to shoot the film elsewhere but stood his ground," and suggested "that the best North American westerns of the last 20 years have probably all been shot in Canada."

In an interview with CTV News, Wyeth Clarkson talked about having been drawn since childhood to Western movies, such as those by John Ford and Sergio Leone, "but always wondered why American sheriffs were depicted onscreen, while Canadian officers were not," arguing the film is educational: "Canada has this rich history and this rich history of iconographic characters that we don't see on our screens and to me that's a real loss, especially for kids who can be so easily influenced to want to learn ... For me, it's important as a filmmaker to sort of stir that pot and at least give people access to Canadian stories." In another interview for The Globe and Mail, he said "I knew to conquer the Canadian West, these guys had to be tough as nails. And I don't think Canadian film has played the resilient qualities of the Mounties up enough."

Of his lead Andrew W. Walker, Wyeth Clarkson said he "just jumped off the screen for me. ... He sent me an audition tape, and Andrew just embodied what I imagined the Mountie to be. There is a fearlessness to him ... and he also was a punt return football player, so he actually is pretty tough. I talked to Andrew about how much I wanted Canadian kids to be able to celebrate their icons and their history, and one day he raised his shirt and showed me a maple-leaf tattoo on his chest. Then he said, 'See, I'm true red Canadian too.'" Walker recounted how Clarkson "sold" the film to him as a Canadian spaghetti Western, resulting in the actor spending a lot of time studying Clint Eastwood. He also studied historical figures such as Sam Steele and other portrayals of the predecessors of the present-day Royal Canadian Mounted Police.