Postmedia chain wins seven awards

The National Post won Best Presentation at the National Newspaper Awards in Toronto on Friday night, with seven awards in total being handed out across the Postmedia newspaper chain.

The Post won for the edition, Terror on the Hill, covering the shooting of ceremonial guard Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial on Parliament Hill in October.

Kim Bolan, a reporter with the Vancouver Sun, took home an award for beat reporting for her crime coverage. Another Vancou- ver Sun writer, Pete McMartin, got the nod for column writing. Judges picked McMartin based on a trio of stories he had written about playing catch, attending a wedding and celebrating Valentine’s Day.

The Calgary Herald’s Michelle Lang fellow, Jessica Barrett, was also a finalist in the special projects category. The Editorials prize was claimed by the Edmonton Journal’s Sarah O’Donnell, for articles advocating for Omar Khadr to “tell his own story,” for the Alberta legislature to keep its front doors open in defiance, of new security protocols and for Alberta Premier Jim Prentice to call an early election.

The Ottawa Citizen’s Julie Oliver won Best Feature Photo with an image of 14-year-old Jonathan Pitre, who suffers from Epidermolysis bullosa, a rare disease defined by severe blistering and shearing of the skin.The Citizen also took the award for Best Short Feature thanks to Shelley Page, who wrote about what it was like to be a female journalist covering the Montreal Massacre, in which 14 women were killed by a deranged gunman in 1989.

The Toronto Sun, which just recently became a Postmedia Network Canada Corp. property, scored best sports photo with an image Stan Behal took of tennis player Gael Monfils diving desperately for the ball at the Rogers Cup.