The best, worst, and weirdest moments at the Canadian Screen Awards

Starting with energetic director Andrew Pun’s over-the-top Billy Crystal homage, ending with two of Canadian culture’s most viral sensations, Heat Rivalry and Nirvana The Band Show the Movie, and taking home the night’s top prize, the 14th Annual Canadian Screen Awards provided enough buzz to keep Mark Carney busy all calendar year.

Before Drake skydives from the CN Tower to steal the spotlight from the CSA, The Globe and Mail presents the best, worst and weirdest moments from Canada’s awards show, the Oscars, Emmys and several other awards, crammed into a two-hour evening.

Hot rivalry crushes competition in 13 categories at Canadian Screen Awards

most hosts

Hoon, who was hosting the show for the first time, opened the show with an energetic and smiling atmosphere, reminiscent of Crystal in her Oscar heyday. That’s especially because the Run the Burbs star sang an original song to bring the night’s nominees to as many people as possible.

While most of Hun’s lines were well-done (“When did Canadian movies get so dark and sexy?”), superstar Mike Myers, who was in the audience with his brothers Paul and Peter before being presented with the Academy Icon Award honor on stage, looked a little embarrassed when his name was confirmed. But it’s unclear how Starr felt about Hun’s well-meaning, but not necessarily very edgy, world-inspired sketch that appeared later in the show. Yeah, baby?

Writer’s Room gets a (CB)C+

CSA’s production design remained woefully confined to the comfortable confines of Toronto’s CBC Broadcast Center. But the show’s scripted banter and interlude sketches (the Wayne’s World hockey skit was insufferable) felt like a step, maybe a step and a half, above recent editions.

Of course, there were failures as well. There was a meta gag about the importance of timing, but Alan Hawco couldn’t live up to it. George Stromboropoulos painted the elbow-up era sentiment a little too heavily. And as expected, there were more jokes about the heated rivalry than mentions of the word “Canada.” But the producers were a far cry from the horror show that 2023’s version of Samantha Bee was, and it deserved an award in its own right.

ice spicy

Hundreds of fans lined up outside Toronto’s CBC headquarters to catch a glimpse of Heat Rivalry star Hudson Williams, whose presence likely nearly doubled the size of the gala and press room attendance, but it would have been a huge disappointment if Heat Rivalry had somehow been ignored Sunday night. But voters at the Canadian Film and Television Academy got that point, awarding the sensational three CSAs at the gala (Best Drama Series, Best Leading Role (Drama) for Williams, and the Cogeco Foundation Audience Choice Award), bringing the show’s total to a record-breaking 16 trophies (out of 18 nominations), most of which were awarded at a ceremony earlier in the week.

“I’m honored to be Canadian. It’s a great thing,” Williams told the audience, praising Crave, the Bell Media streamer, and HBO. This was probably the first CSA cry for a US network.

But it was easy to notice that he wasn’t in Toronto among the members of the heated rival team. That’s his American co-star Conor Storey, who was not nominated this year due to a change in the Canadian Academy’s eligibility rules (“all categories honoring accredited Canadian work are restricted to Canadian citizens or permanent residents only”).

“If I could cut this award down the middle, I would,” Williams added in his acceptance speech, noting that he is sharing the award with “honorary Canadian” Storey.

Great Scott!

Surprisingly, Matt Johnson’s uproarious time-travel buddy comedy Nirvana won Best Picture, bringing CSA’s total to six, given that RT Thorne’s thriller 40 Acres sweeps the nine nominations it received earlier in the week and opens on Sunday. Once again, the film became the defining Canadian screen sensation of 2026 (possibly back in 2025, given its TIFF midnight premiere), breaking box office records and inspiring a very vocal supporter online.

Director Johnson said on stage, “This is the first time we’ve won an award for a movie we made that didn’t have a single adult who would normally do something like this,” and launched into a colorful riff on Quebec cinema.

How will the Canadian Screen Awards quell fierce competition among domestic media giants?

“Thank you to the lawyers. This case would not have been possible without you,” producer Matthew Miller quickly added, highlighting the film’s unique approach to copyrighted material.

This big win further confirms that Nirvana’s braintrust (including co-star and co-writer Jay McCarroll (who won the CSA Best Comedy Award), producers Miller and Matt Grayson, and editors Kurt Robb and Robert Upchurch) is the reigning king of Canadian film after the 2024 BlackBerry election. Now, all we have to do is have the Academy of Canada do a post-mortem to find out why this movie didn’t win any awards. Nominated for Best Editing… Or maybe they’ve already solved the problem with Orbitz flux capacitors and we’re actually living in an alternate reality that’s fucked up. Or something like that. Godspeed, Matt and Jay.

40 acres, but not all 9 yards.

Thorne’s post-apocalyptic film “40 Acres” won awards earlier this week for Best Director, Best First Feature, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Editing, Best Music, Best Casting and Best Stunt, but although it lost out to Nirvana in the major awards, the night had some interesting full-circle moments. Thorne’s intense and eye-opening film was originally developed as the first installment of Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program in 2018. The program is a microbudget slate of federal funding agencies revamped by Nirvana’s Johnson & Miller.

northern exposure

The Iqaluit-set sitcom North of the North, an unprecedented collaboration between Netflix, CBC and APTN, earned Anna Lambe two CSAs for Best Comedy Series and Best Lead Performer (Comedy), bringing her total to nine CSAs. And Lambe was especially emotional about what this moment means to Indigenous cultures: “We have a right to joy,” the actress told the crowd.

Bakery’s Ten Starry Night

Typically, the Canadian Screen Awards focus on notable celebrities. But this year, the night boasted so many bold-faced names that it wasn’t all that surprising to see trade publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter suddenly telling their U.S.-based readers to fire up their VPNs to access Canadian broadcasts.

In addition to Williams and Myers, the latter of whom tried a small amount of French in his charming but slightly drawn-out Academy Icon Award acceptance speech, there were some serious heavy hitters in the audience.

Netflix star May Martin presented the award for best drama, pointing out that Canada has always been the “weird Goth kid in the corner” before harshly criticizing Corus Broadcasting. Eugene Levy took to the stage to honor his late co-creator Catherine O’Hara (“the person I spent the most time working with”). And Forever Kid in the Hall had Dave Foley there to introduce Myers. Compared to last year’s CSA winner Cate Blanchett’s cardboard cutout, there was a fair amount of Hollywood name recognition mixed in at the north of the border celebration. And lurking in the audience, but sadly not highlighted on screen: Tia Carrere, with whom Meyers loves Wayne’s World.

I can’t forget even if I’m empty-handed

As always happens at awards shows, especially ones as large and expansive as the CSA, there are always a few highly acclaimed films that come into the show with a ton of nominations and walk away empty-handed.

This year’s class includes Sophie Ronvari’s excellent drama The Blue Heron (nominated for seven awards, including Best Picture), Eric K. Boulianne’s sex comedy Follies (8 nods), Alireza Khatami’s thriller The Things You Kill (3), and Mathieu Denis’ The Price of Heaven (losing out on both Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture).

And while Chandler Rebak’s romantic comedy Mile End Kicks won one of those eight categories (Best Editing, won earlier in the week), I wish the film had won Best Original Song (A/S/L for aptly capturing the film’s early Montreal feel), or at least tied it with Nirvana’s Alphabet Song, a hilarious winner in more ways than one.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Connor Storrie’s last name.