This year’s Gemini Award special winners recognize long-running CBC comedy talents as well as behind-the-scenes players.

Royal Canadian Air Farce has for years made viewers laugh with its mockery of national politicians and celebrities, but it is the group’s charitable causes that have earned it this year’s Gemini Humanitarian Award.

In its early days on CBC Radio, when each of its shows was a fund-raiser, the RCAF reportedly raised more than $4 million for local charities. The group’s charitable side crossed over to TV with them in 1993, when it began inviting studio audiences to bring donations for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank.

The RCAF has announced that its $10,000 award winnings, sponsored by Global Television, will be divided up among the Easter Seals Society of Ontario, the African Jesuit AIDS network, and another charity to be confirmed. The troupe’s current lineup includes Roger Abbott, who helped launch the RCAF in 1973, vets Don Ferguson and Luba Goy, and newbies Jessica Holmes, Craig Lauzon and Alan Park. It is the RCAF’s third Gemini.

Comedian Steve Smith, best known for his starring role on The Red Green Show, going into its 15th and final season on CBC, will receive this year’s Earle Grey Award for his body of work. Smith’s TV career began with the sketch comedy series Smith & Smith, featuring himself and wife Morag. A prolific writer and producer, Smith’s credits also include the series Me & Max, Smith & Smith’s Comedy Mill and Laughing Matters. Smith’s signature character made it to the big screen in 2002’s Red Green’s Duct Tape Forever. Smith’s prodco, S&S Productions, boasts a diversified slate that includes the Gemini-nominated satirical series History Bites, several magazine shows and animation, including Sons of Butcher. Smith has won two previous Geminis.

David Greene, who has had a storied career in the audio side of the business, is the recipient of the Academy Achievement Award. The U.S.-born Greene, who enjoyed stints dating back to the 1960s with MGM Records and A & R Recording, joined Toronto’s Manta Sound Studios (now part of Technicolor) in 1971 as chief engineer. He later formed music and audio production house Unlimited Productions, which later became the basis for Magnetic Music and then part of Magnetic North, where he was VP/GM. He left in 2000 to get back into hands-on production, working on award-winning projects such as Hitler: The Rise of Evil.

The Canada Award, for excellence in TV programming reflecting racial and cultural diversity, goes to the National Film Board’s Two Worlds Colliding, which examines a series of mysterious freezing deaths of Saskatchewan aboriginal men, and what role local police may have played. The film is written and directed by rookie Tasha Hubbard, a Cree who was adopted into a non-aboriginal family with a history in the police force. The award is shared with Bonnie Thompson, who produces for the NFB.

The winner of the Gordon Sinclair Award, for exceptional work in TV journalism, had not been announced by Playback’s press time. The Canada and Sinclair awards will be presented at the Documentary, News and Sports Gala (Nov. 17), while the Achievement, Earle Grey and Humanitarian trophies will be handed out at the Industry Gala (Nov. 18).