‘The show is undeniable’: team behind CBC’s ‘The Porter’ celebrates its 12 Canadian Screen Award wins

There was no talk of regrets on Friday evening from the cast and creative team of “The Porter,” which had just won a record 12 Canadian Screen Awards mere weeks after word came that the show would not get a second season.

“I don’t really talk too much about the hurdles or the doors that close. I’m not about that,” Arnold Pinnock, who co-created the landmark series about Black Canadian railway porters, told a roomful of media after the award presentations. “I’m not about to talk about being a victim. We got it done. And look at us today. You know, I’m really, really proud of that.”

CBC’s “The Porter,” set mainly in 1920s Montreal, featured an almost all-Black cast and creative team telling the story of a largely unknown piece of Black Canadian history: the creation of the first Black labour union in North America by Canadian railway porters. It dominated Friday’s Comedic and Dramatic Arts Awards so thoroughly that TallBoyz comedian Guled Abdi joked the ceremony should be called “the Porter Screen Awards.”

No other TV series has won that many CSAs in a single night or for a single season.

Besides Best Drama Series, “The Porter” took Best Director for Charles Officer, Best Writing for Marsha Greene and Best Guest Performance for American actor Alfre Woodard, plus prizes for production design, picture editing, photography, original music, original song, costume design, hair and makeup.

It was kept from a sweep by CTV medical drama “Transplant,” which won Best Sound, Best Casting and Best Lead Performer for star Hamza Haq, and Global’s “Departure,” for which Christopher Plummer received a posthumous Best Supporting Performer prize.

“Porter” cast member Mouna Traoré called the wins for the series “validating. I think that the show, the talent, the importance is undeniable.”

“We got to showcase what talented people we have in our Canadian Black community,” Pinnock added. “And each and every one of these people could be the lead on any show. And I think if we can showcase that … we’ve done our job because, you know, the power of the show doesn’t stop just because the show is over.”

That power is on display on CBC Gem, where anyone who cares to do so canappreciate the richness of what Pinnock and his team wrought. But it’s also worth noting that a high quality Canadian drama didn’t get a second season because its producers couldn’t afford to make it without a foreign partner.

The show was a co-production of CBC and the American BET Plus streaming network. Despite the ongoing support of CBC, production company Sphere Media was unable to find a partner for Season 2 when BET pulled out because, as executive producer Jennifer Kawaja told The Canadian Press in February, there was a lack of interest in “the Canadian point of view.”

On Friday, Kawaja told journalists in the media room that it’s important “to keep reminding everyone in this country, but the power brokers of this country, the people who decide where the money goes, that we need to be able to finance our own stories … We need not to have to go to the U.S. or England or Europe … because Black stories, Indigenous stories, white stories, political stories, union stories, Canadian stories, we can’t afford to make them. That’s a problem.”

A plea for more money was also issued by Indigenous actor, director and producer Jennifer Podemski who, after accepting the Academy Board of Directors’ Tribute Award, issued a call to action to everyone watching, “to increase permanent funding from the federal government for the Indigenous Screen Office.”

The office said last week its very future is at risk after the government failed to include such funding in its recent budget. Podemski said that office has transformed the industry for Indigenous creators like her.

So clearly there is still work to be done to ensure diverse Canadian stories get produced, but at least some of those stories were rewarded during Canadian Screen Week.

The night before “The Porter” scooped up its 12 awards, the movie “Brother” also set a record and dominated the Cinematic Arts Awards. The film adaptation of David Chariandy’s novel about two Jamaican-Canadian brothers growing up in Scarborough won Best Motion Picture and 11 other prizes.

And on Friday, the biggest TV comedy winner was “Sort Of,” which stars queer, South Asian, trans-feminine actor Bilal Baig as a gender-fluid South Asian millennial.

It took seven prizes, including Best Comedy Series, Best Lead Performer for Baig, and Best Writing for Baig and production partner Fab Filippo. Last year, Baig didn’t even submit their name for a performance award since the categories were still divided by gender.

Baig said they’ve heard from transgender and non-binary friends “about conversations being unlocked with their parents, or people who didn’t kind of totally understand them before, starting to feel a kind of sensitivity toward the way trans and non-binary people live their lives.

“And I think that’s pretty powerful because I think (with ‘Sort Of’) we were always just trying to be like, ‘Hey, let’s just watch this person live and breathe and exist, and the world probably won’t end if we do that.’”

At least “Sort Of,” unlike “The Porter,” will be back. A third season is in the works since, luckily, HBO Max in the States is still on board with the show, which just got nominated for a second Peabody Award.

And that wasn’t the only good news for fans of diverse Canadian TV on Friday.

“Little Bird,” the series Podemski co-created about one Indigenous woman’s experience of being removed from her home during the Sixties Scoop, will come to Crave soon, she said.

The show won the audience award last month at the Series Mania festival in France, which “was a testament to the fact that this does resonate deeply with audiences even outside of Canada,” said Podemski.

As far as Pinnock is concerned, there’s still a wealth of Canadian stories to be told and not just African-Canadian ones.

Other people, he said, “can look at (‘The Porter’) and go, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. I want to do that. I can do that’ … So I hope we inspire people to go after their dreams and tell their stories.”

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Culture section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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