Torstar took home six prizes at the National Newspaper Awards, one of the highest honours in Canadian journalism. The Toronto Star won four and its sister papers the Hamilton Spectator and St. Catharines Standard took one each.

Investigative reporters Robert Cribb and Marco Chown Oved won the award for Best Business Reporting for their deep dive into the Panama Papers, a leak of more than 11 million financial and legal documents that revealed the inner workings of the shady world of tax havens, which cost government coffers billions of dollars each year.

Star science reporter Kate Allen won for Best Explanatory Work for her project on the effects of climate change: not on humans but on other inhabitants of the planet, from bumblebees to shrubs.

Jesse Winter, now a reporter for StarMetro Vancouver, won for Best Long Feature for a heartbreaking story he wrote for the Star about an Indigenous man who was failed by family, friends, government and the justice system after being raped by his uncle as a child.

Star photographer Andrew Francis Wallace won for Best Sports Photo for a jarring image of a rugby player with a badly mangled finger.

Hamilton Spectator reporter Steve Buist won for Best Sports Reporting for “Collision Course,” a four-part series that exposed the impact of concussions on retired Canadian football players.

Grant LaFleche of the St. Catharines Standard won in the Local Reporting category for a series of stories on the impact of child abuse by a Roman Catholic priest.

In total, the Toronto Star had 12 nominations in eight categories.

The Globe and Mail won six awards, from among 18 nominations in 13 categories, including two awards for Robyn Doolittle. She won Best Investigation for her “Unfounded” series, which revealed how frequently Canadian police forces did not conclude investigations into sexual assault allegations.

Doolittle also won Journalist of the Year, with the jury recognizing the impact her investigation had in changing police behaviour.

The National Newspaper Awards recognize daily newspapers, news agencies and online news sites in Canada. There were 63 finalists in 21 categories, selected from 881 entries for work published in 2017.

Other awards were won by the Vancouver Sun, National Post, La Presse, Edmonton Journal, Halifax Chronicle Herald and Ottawa Citizen.