Vikings walked away with a big haul at the 16th annual Directors Guild of Canada Award show. Helen Shaver claimed the best direction for a dramatic series prize for her work on the History television series, which also picked up a pair of trophies in the best picture editing and sound editing categories.

Meanwhile, Mary Kills People director Holly Dale picked up the top directing trophy in the MOW/miniseries category, where the show competed against the likes of Cardinal (Daniel Grou), Odd Squad: The Movie (J.J. Johnson) and Serialized (Michel Poulette). 

Bruce McDonald’s direction on Weirdos (pictured), took the top directing prize in the feature film category, which also included Undercover Grandpa (Erik Canuel), Mean Dreams (Nathan Morlando), Two Lovers and a Bear (Kim Nguyen) and Awakening the Zodiac (Jonathan Wright).

Other big winners of the evening included CTV’s Cardinal, which walked away with three trophies, including hardware in the production design, picture editing and sound editing; and the Fred Peabody-directed project All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone, which won the Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary as well as the best picture editing in docs trophy (for editor Jim Munro).

The 2017 DGC Discovery Award was presented to emerging filmmaker Wayne Wapeemukwa for his film Luk’Luk’I.

Getting into specific categories: Aleysa Young (Baroness Von Sketch Show) and Dean Bennett (Heartland) picked up best direction in the comedy and family categories respectively.

Elsewhere in the best picture editing categories, Ron Sanders/Sandy Pereira won the feature prize for Mean Dreams, Donald Cassidy won the TV series prize for Vikings and Teresa De Luca won the MOW/miniseries award for Cardinal.

Cardinal also claimed the best production design award in the MOW/miniseries category, with the prize going to award-winning production designer Rob Gray, who passed away in December 2016. In the other production design awards, John Dondertman won the TV prize for Orphan Black and Lisa Soper won the film prize for Awakening the Zodiac.

In the sound editing awards category, the film prize went to Ratchet & Clank (Nelson Ferreira, J.R. Fountain, Dashen Naidoo, John D. Smith), the MOW/miniseries prize went to Cardinal (Claire Dobson, Nelson Ferreira, Paul Germann, David McCallum, Jane Tattersall) and the TV series prize went to Vikings (Claire Dobson, Andrew Jablonski, David McCallum, Steve Medeiros, Brennan Mercer, Dale Sheldrake, Jane Tattersall).

On the night, Don Shebib was also presented with the DGC Lifetime Achievement Award and Anne Sirois received the Don Haldane Distinguished Service Award.