CBC hauled away the lion’s share of news prizes at Monday night’s Geminis in what has become something of a tradition since CTV began boycotting the category in 2006.

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television opened its annual awards in Toronto with galas for news and sports, followed by documentaries.

CBC nabbed 13 out of 17 news prizes overall for programs including the fifth estate, The National, Hockey Night in Canada and its coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Flagship newscast The National nabbed three awards including best reportage for Neil MacDonald, news magazine segment for ‘The Taser Test’ and best newscast overall. The prize for news anchor will be revealed at the main gala on Nov. 14. Four CBC anchors are nominated including Peter Mansbridge.

CBC is in the midst of overhauling its news department — the changes of which will be announced on Wednesday — a point alluded to by National producer Mark Harrison, who accepted the Gemini for newscast. ‘This award comes at a turning point for us… we’ll be making a few changes at the CBC,’ he said, building ‘on the foundation of programming’ like The National.

Meanwhile, the fifth estate grabbed additional news/information trophies — a best host nod for Gillian Findlay and direction for Harvey Cashore for the episode The Chess Master. Hockey Night in Canada and Hockey Day in Canada each nabbed one Gemini, while CBC’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was recognized with five prizes overall.

Veteran play-by-play announcer Steve Armitage was recognized for his work on swimming at the Olympics. He credited colleague Byron McDonald, who picked up the award for sports analyst for swimming — one of the high-profile events of the Olympics, thanks to Michael Phelphs’ record-breaking eight gold-medal haul at the event.

‘It really is teamwork at its highest when you have that type of analysis and Byron does it better than most,’ Armitage said.

The lone other winner in news was Global National, which took best special event coverage for the 2008 federal election.

TSN grabbed three Geminis including best sportscast for SportsCentre, host in a sports program for Brian Williams for the 2008 Grey Cup, and anchor for James Duthie.

Duthie paid tribute to fellow SportsCentre anchor and nominee Darren Dutchyshen, noting, ‘[He’s] my favorite sportscaster to watch on a nightly basis,’ during his acceptance speech.

Later that night, during the doc and lifestyle segment, came a reminder that nominations don’t always translate into awards.

Despite three nominations, viewer favorite Survivorman and host Les Stroud emerged from the wilderness with no hardware, as did Ballinran Productions/Tile Films’ Death or Canada — which had its name in the hat four times.

CBC’s The Hour also missed out on the best writing award for its Sarah Palin episode. But, as awards host Jian Ghomeshi put it at the start of the ceremony, it really could have been called the ‘sometimes this shit writes itself episode.’ And you don’t get awards for that.

But the evening had many other highlights.

Rezolution Pictures’s Tracey Deer took best writing in a documentary series for her Club Native, only to return to the stage a few minutes later to help accept the Canada Award for the film. Observed an obviously touched Deer, ‘I always wanted to be a filmmaker since growing up on my reserve as a little girl.’ She thanked both the National Film Board and APTN for their ‘outstanding commitment to aboriginal programming.’

Ambrose Price took best lifestyle host for The Decorating Adventures of Ambrose Price. Price accepted the award with a very short, heartfelt speech, claiming he wasn’t prepared, having been so surprised just to be nominated.

Larger-than-life Mike Holmes also loomed over the awards, presenting several Geminis with his characteristic caustic humor before winning one himself. Holmes took the best lifestyle series nod for his emotional Holmes in New Orleans effort.

Holmes reserved special praise for HGTV and Canwest, explaining that his pitch to the network was ‘We’re going to New Orleans, and it’s going to cost a lot of money.’ Perhaps not an approach recommended for most producers.

Holmes summarized the award with his own bombastic humility: ‘It was a shame that we had to win a Gemini for something that should have been done right in the first place.’

The awards will continue to hand out hardware on Tuesday night for children’s and youth; and drama, variety and comedy categories.