Saint Ralph, Corner Gas and H2O were among the winners on April 18 when the Canadian Screenwriting Awards were handed out at a packed downtown Toronto nightspot.

Coming off a recent win at the Paris Film Festival, writer/ director Michael McGowan was on hand to accept the feature film prize for Ralph, his just-released story about a boy out to win the Boston Marathon, drawing applause from the crowd and host Jessica Holmes.

The nod for MOW and miniseries went to writers Paul Gross and John Krizanc for CBC’s H2O. Krizanc told to the crowd that it was easy to write the political thriller with Gross because most of their ideas came from their shared, drunken rants.

George F. Walker and Dani Romain won the drama prize for an episode of This is Wonderland, while Brent Butt, Mark Farrell and Paul Mather scored in comedy and variety for the ‘Comedy Night’ ep of Corner Gas.

The win for an episodic documentary went to writer/director Dugald Maudsley for an installment of Turning Points of History (‘The Brickland: The Premier, The Promoter and Their Car’), while the one-off doc prize went to Robert Duncan and his Smarter Than The Rest of Us.

The Degrassi: The Next Generation episode ‘Mercy Street’ won in the youth category for James Hurst and Miklos Perlus, while the Blobheads ep ‘Reality Bites’ by writer Nicole Demerse scored in children and preschool.

Andrea Gutsche won the Jim Burt Screenwriting Prize for Dead Sparrows, her first attempt at a script, while Jill Golick and David Peddie took the Writers Block Award and the Alex Barris Mentorship Award, respectively.

Midway through the ceremony, Holmes joked about the voting process, noting, ‘The difference between the jury selection for the new pope, and tonight’s award nominees, is that there is more than one puff of smoke exhaled during the decision process for the screenwriters selections.’

-www.writersguildofcanada.com