Tatiana Maslany might have wished she really could clone herself Sunday night, as she won Best Actress awards for both her TV and film work at the Canadian Screen Awards, a.k.a. the Candys.

The popular actress, a previous winner several times over, had to make almost back-to-back trips up to the Sony Centre stage: first to receive the lead actress award for The Other Half, a romantic film drama few people saw.

That was followed minutes later by the lead actress prize for playing multiple clone characters on Orphan Black, a sci-fi TV drama that many people have seen and which had a leading 14 Candy nominations overall — it garnered nine wins in all, including Best Dramatic Series. The show is currently shooting its fifth and final season.

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The complete list of winners at the Canadian Screen Awards broadcast gala

Canadian stars come out to shine on the CSA red carpet

The most nominated film going into the evening, Xavier Dolan’s family drama It’s Only the End of the World, likewise emerged as the top winner in its field. It scored wins six of its nine nominations, taking gold that included Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Vincent Cassel).

Another film champ was Race, a biopic about Olympic champion Jesse Owens, which had four wins from its eight nominated categories, including Best Actor for first-time winner Stephan James. (Molly Parker won Best Supporting Actress for the coming-of-age drama Weirdos.)

But overall the event felt like the Tatiana Maslany/Orphan Black show.

She was also pressed into service as a presenter and emcee Howie Mandel even worked her into his opening monologue, where he came up with yet another nickname for the Canadian Screen Awards, which besides the Candys have also been called the CSAs and the Screenies.

Mandel’s is the least likely to catch on.

“What is that? Do you know?” Mandel said of the golden trophy, which resembles a stylized hug and is bestowed for the best in Canadian film, TV and online productions and talent.

“Screen, television, digital: it’s an STD!” Mandel said.

“How many of you are going to go home tonight with an STD?”

Walking up to Maslany in the audience, Mandel said to her, “A woman as talented as you deserves as many STDs as she goes for.”

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The joke brought groans as well as laughs. But the night’s most consistently amusing star was veteran Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, born in Toronto 87 years ago, who brought the house down with his one-liners as he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for many decades of acclaimed stage, TV and film roles, the latter including The Sound of Music, The Insider and Beginners.

“Quite obviously, the awards committee used my name out of pity: ‘We’d better give it to him now before he croaks,’ ” Plummer said with a mischievous grin.

“And they’re absolutely right, I’m old, dangerously old . . . I’m so old, when I was a baby, the first word I uttered was in Latin!”

But this Oscar, Emmy and Tony winner — to name just a few of his many accolades — served notice that he’s far from finished.

“By no means is this the end. The curtain has not yet fallen. It’s simply stuck!”

Another veteran thespian honoured Sunday night was Tantoo Cardinal, 66, the Alberta indigenous actress who received the Earle Grey Award for her many contributions to Canadian cinema and television. Her roles have included the films Dances With Wolves, Legends of the Fall and Black Robe, and the TV shows North of 60 and Frontier.

She dedicated her prize to the advancement of all aboriginal artists.

“I felt the breaking hearts of injustice and the loving laughter of survival. They kept me moving forward, in the hopes that our stories would be told. And you know what? It looks like it’s happening.”

The Star’s Michelle Shephard won her third Candy in a week of Canadian Screen Awards festivities for her documentary Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr, an in-depth look at a man who has been both a casualty of war and also of xenophobia.

She dedicated it to her fellow journalists.

“To all the journalists and filmmakers who are being harassed today for doing their jobs: if fake news means uncovering truths that make government or people in position of power uncomfortable, then this is a win for fake news,” she said.

There was some big-name American talent on the stage as well: comedian Dave Chappelle, who came to help present a special honour to Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival.

Chappelle said the decades-old comedy fest was a huge influence on him, from a very young age.

He called Just for Laughs a “national treasure” for Canada and a wonderful discovery for himself: “It’s like a little gay brother that I didn’t know I had.”

Among the night’s few surprises was a Best Comedy Series win for Letterkenny, a hockey-and-hicks laugher that faced stiff competition from the better-known series Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience, which each had more nominations than Letterkenny.