By the time the Gemini Awards production team cues the cameras for the 8 p.m. start of the awards broadcast on cbc March 6, some of the envelopes will have already been opened.

Not a breach of security. It’s just that the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, which produces the Geminis, divulges the winners of the Special Awards well in advance of the awards night.

The Canada Award, formerly known as the Multiculturalism Award, is in its sixth year recognizing an English-language program that reflects Canada’s multicultural society. The award is also presented at the Gemeaux for a French-language show.

This year’s jury has selected SPEAK IT! From The Heart of Black Nova Scotia, a half-hour documentary by director Sylvia Hamilton which was produced through the National Film Board’s Atlantic Centre by Mike Mahoney. The film is set in Halifax and observes the progress of four black high school students trying to establish a Cultural Awareness Youth Group and fighting racism. nfb publicity notes that the film reveals the good that can come when young people refuse to lose hope and ‘discover the richness of their heritage and… some of the ways they can begin to effect change’ in the face of racist attitudes.

The John Drainie Award, given to an individual who has made a ‘significant contribution to broadcasting in Canada,’ goes to Max Ferguson, whose broadcasting career started in 1946.

Fresh out of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., where he grew up, Ferguson took off for Halifax as a CBC Radio announcer and dj. On an early assignment announcing for a western music program, he took to the airwaves with the Old Rawhide character and a drawl that would become famous. Rawhide delighted audiences, first in Halifax and environs and later across the country on the whole network once Ferguson moved to Toronto.

On the Max Ferguson Show he demonstrated, as publicist June Graham has written, a ‘formidable ability to be funny five days a week for 30 years without the help of a bevy of scriptwriters or gag men. A daily newspaper to spark his imagination, a well-honed sense of humor, an ability to ad lib his way in and out of thousands of hilarious make-believe situations, and his quick-witted straight man, Allan McFee, have been his only aids.’

New format

After checking out of the cbc and the first Max Ferguson Show in 1976, Ferguson returned to CBC Radio and partner McFee in 1983. Ferguson’s been doing a same-name, different-format program over the last years, McFee having departed several years back. Now it’s a 90-minute, music-oriented program on the stereo network on Saturday mornings.

Besides broadcasting, he’s authored books, written comedy and drama, survived a winter in an unwinterized cottage in Cape Breton with only Airedales for company, hauled stones, gardened, baked, performed more comedy, received five honorary degrees, won an actra award and the Order of Canada and who knows what else. Now living in Grafton, Ont., Ferguson adds a special Gemini to his collection.

There are few television performers who are as well known to Canadians in different age groups as Ernie Coombs, the man who has been absorbing young viewers as the quiet, friendly and welcoming Mr. Dressup for 25 years. Fitting, then, that a special jury has honored him with the Earle Grey Award in recognition of his body of work in television. The award is timely given that Coombs, who came to Canada in 1963 with Fred Rogers – then developing Mister Rogers for cbc – celebrates a quarter of a century on-air. Just the same, Coombs has not tired of his tv persona, one which he has taken beyond the tv screen to every province and territory in Canada.

Writing

Like Coombs, Alex Barris is an American-turned-Canadian and is also a winner of a 1994 Special Gemini. Barris wins the Margaret Collier Award for an outstanding body of written work in television. The committee selecting the Collier recipient concluded it was time that someone who wrote mainly for variety programs be recognized by the Academy. (While the committee was examining his writing for television, Barris’ resume recounts an eclectic entertainment career including experience as a journalist, broadcaster, author, lyricist, performer and producer.)

Barris did variety with a vengeance. He wrote ‘countless’ tv shows in Canada between 1956 and 1968. On cbc’s stalwart Front Page Challenge, Barris was an original panelist who also hosted intermittently and went behind the camera to write it between 1964 and 1968. At the time of Challenge’s 25th anniversary, Barris wrote a commemorative book.

In 1969 he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked with many big-name personalities and received an Emmy nomination for work on The Doris Day Special. He returned to Canada in 1977. Some of his credits include: 120 episodes of Celebrity Revue (1976), The Juliette Special (1977), seven episodes of King of Kensington (1978), 30 episodes of Rear View Mirror (1981-85), Lorne Greene Remembered (1987), and Gordon Pinsent Sings Those Hollywood Songs, which he cowrote and coproduced (1987).

The special awards also recognize technical achievement. This year, a six-person jury concluded the award for outstanding technical achievement should go to Kodak Canada for its film stock 5293/7293. One member of the jury, Telesat Canada’s Wilson Markle, says the stock received testimonials from several well-known cinematographers, a main theme being that the stock afforded ‘flexibility and control… over the entire photographic process in television production.’

Finally, a new category is the special award for Best Local News Program. At press time, the jury for this award had yet to meet.