Charles (Chuck) Lazer, Larry Bambrick and Mark McKinney were among the screenwriters fetted at last night’s Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Awards.

Screenwriters from the film, TV and digital media communities honoured their peers at a celebration at Maro restaurant in downtown Toronto.

The show, hosted by Ryan Belleville, with a script written by Bob Kerr, saw Belleville making jabs and jibes at the expense of virtually everyone in the community – the CBC, CTV, the CMF, Rogers, Bell Media and himself – to the amusement of the attendees, who took to Twitter throughout the event to post about his cracks.

McKinney (Kids in the Hall, Slings & Arrows) was presented with the WGC Showrunner Award for his body of work and creative vision.

Barbara Samuels (North of 60) was presented with the Alex Barris Mentorship Award by Flashpoint writer Adam Barken for her work supporting emerging writers at the CFC and Humber College.

And Lazer received the Writers Block Award for his record of service to screenwriters in Canada.

“It’s been quite a ride,” Lazer, who has served as president of the ACTRA Writers Guild Toronto branch and is a founder of the WGC, told the crowd as he picked up his award.

For animation, Mr. D star Darrin Rose picked up an award for his Scaredy Squirrel script, Nothing But the Tooth, and for children and youth, Alice Prodanou nabbed an award for her ReVamped ep script for teen series My Babysitter’s a Vampire.

Gary Marcuse took honours for his documentary script, Waking the Green Tiger, A Green Movement Rises in China, which premiered last year on CBC’s The Nature of Things.

The film, which Marcuse also directed, was named Best Canadian Feature Film last October at the Planet in Focus Film Festival in Toronto.

Bruce M. Smith received a statue for the two-hour TV movie John A: Birth of a Country, and Patrick Tarr took home a prize for webseries ep The Vanished Corpse, of the Smokebomb-produced webseries Murdoch Mysteries: The Curse of the Lost Pharoahs.

For TV Drama, Bambrick nabbed the prize for his Flashpoint episode, Shockwave.

“Thank you for this award, it means a hell of a lot,” he told the crowd.

Craig David Wallace won in the comedy category for Todd and the Book of Pure Evil episode A Farewell to Curtis’ Arm. See story.

With files from Matt Sylvain

Photo: group at the WGC (L-R – Devjani Raha, David Paetkau, Michael MacLennan, guest, Flashpoint writer Adam Barken) / courtesy WGC