Maria Topalovich, like Sergeant Pepper, can easily cast her mind back to a memorable date two decades ago.

The president and CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television had already been working for her organization for seven years when the Gemini Awards were launched in December 1986.

‘The first Gemini ceremony will always remain close to my heart,’ she recalls. ‘We’d spent six years working towards it, with many challenges along the way. The gala evening was extraordinary. We had Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas and Eugene Levy as our hosts. I remember being thrilled that Donald Brittain won an award for writing Canada’s Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks. He was such an icon for me.’

Audiences that night saw series Anne of Green Gables, Seeing Things and Night Heat win multiple awards. Topalovich and the Academy were just as excited that the awards actually made it to air.

‘We had arranged for the Geminis to be a coproduction with the CBC,’ she explains, but in a turn of events familiar to current TV viewers, ‘[CBC] was in a strike position with NABET and CUPE. We couldn’t get assurances that a strike or a lockout wouldn’t take place, so we put together our own syndicated network. Jay Switzer, who was director of programming at Citytv, did it in 48 hours!’

The format of that first show proved to be a template for future Gemini presentations, with only major genres and artistic categories included in the broadcast.

‘We wanted to reflect the taste of the general public,’ Topalovich says. ‘To this day, most of the categories have remained the same – you have sports, drama, news and comedy. Directors and writers get their awards on television. We are trying to build a star system here, so performance categories are very important to have in the mix. And we have documentary because of the tradition in this country of producing fine work in that genre.’

The Academy’s peer jury system, like the broadcast, hasn’t changed much over the years. The major difference is that now, the time from the start of the nomination process to the actual awards presentation is six months. With a membership of more than 4,000, the Academy assembles juries annually – from St. John’s to Vancouver – to look at work in numerous categories (87 this year), ranging from best achievement in makeup to direction in a drama series. The Academy makes sure that the juries in its peripatetic industry don’t have any involvement in the shows they’re judging. After all the juries have met, PricewaterhouseCoopers tabulates the final results.

While there has always has been a lot of work involved in creating and maintaining the awards system, Topalovich can recall many memorable moments that make the Geminis exciting and worthwhile.

‘I remember the 1989 show, when Martin Short was the host. We had set up a revolving stage. After a commercial break, Marty was supposed to come back, in character, but there was a problem – the stage wasn’t revolving! And it was live TV. There was bedlam. Backstage, we were trying to get the thing going. We had technical directors and stage crew, but no one could get it to work. It was Seinfeld-ish. It turned out that someone had pulled out the plug! Meanwhile, Marty was hilarious. He’d gone on with the show, telling the audience that everyone should imagine a rotating stage.’

A poignant Gemini memory for Topalovich was when ‘a very pregnant Tina Gerussi accepted the Earle Grey Award [for an outstanding body of work] for [her father] Bruno Gerussi, who had passed away.’

One of her favorite moments was a skit at the 1992 awards. ‘The camera panned up to a man wearing jeans and a leather jacket. It was [CTV newscaster] Lloyd Robertson with his shirttails out, exclaiming, ‘The Tragically Hip rock and rule!”

After two decades, Topalovich finds the biggest development to which the Geminis has had to adapt is the industry’s exponential growth.

‘I know it’s apples and oranges, but the number of entries for the Genies hasn’t changed that much over the years,’ she says. ‘But in television, we’ve grown from approximately 600 entries to 2,400. Our awards have gone from 53 to 87.’

And looking forward, she adds, ‘The Academy’s challenge is to get more of the public to appreciate the talent that is producing so much wonderful work here.’