TORONTO - Patrick Watson is $20,000 richer today after winning the 2007 Polaris Music Prize award last night for his album Close To Paradise.

Well, make that $4,000 richer.

The Montreal performer and his band earned the award on the same day the group was also presented with a bill for $16,000 for a van they crashed in Fargo, North Dakota shortly after this year's Juno Awards.

But after humorously retelling the story which sounded like it could have come from the motion picture Fargo, Watson said being nominated felt as good as actually winning the award.

"I don't know if you noticed but the bands that played tonight and the bands that we were nominated were pretty amazing," Watson said moments winning. "It's kind of like a responsibility at that point to win over those great acts."

A final "grand jury" panel deliberated over who would win the award based solely on artistic merit during the course of the evening hosted by CBC radio personality Grant Lawrence. In the end, Watson's album beat out more known acts such as The Dears' Gang Of Losers, Junior Boys' So This Is Goodbye, Feist's The Reminder and Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.

Opening with the song Drifters, Watson was one of five performers from the 10 nominees to play a brief two-song set before some 400 musicians, industry people and media at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre.

Other performers included Halifax's Joel Plaskett Emergency, Montreal's Miracle Fortress, Moncton's Julie Doiron backed by her former band mates in Eric's Trip, Calgarian Chad VanGaalen and Montreal's The Besnard Lakes.

And while Watson and The Besnard Lakes spent most of the night playfully taking shots at each other, Watson says he felt VanGaalen deserved to win the award after watching the Calgary native's set.

Meanwhile VanGaalen, who tossed out the idea that David Suzuki could be one of the nominees in 2008, was still taking it all the hoopla before the proceedings got underway.

"They just flew me out here and I've never been celebrated to this extent before, I think it's cool but I feel a little bit weird about it," he said. "But it's not so weird because the other artists are awesome."

One of the artists VanGaalen mentioned was Julie Doiron. Doiron, introduced by radio personality Dave Bookman performing a Doiron-inspired version of the Beach Boys' California Girls, said the nomination was a bit unexpected given that Woke Myself Up is her seventh full-length effort.

Nonetheless, the attention all 10 nominees received was far greater this year than last year according to Polaris Music Prize Founder and Executive Director Steve Jordan.

"We got some last year but it was kind of after the fact," Jordan said. "But when the nominees were announced this year we were showing up in NME (Britain's New Musical Express), Pitchfork, all the places where we had showed up after the fact last year."

Only Arcade Fire and Feist were unable to attend, the former were performing in Seattle last night while the latter played London as part of a European tour.

The Polaris Music Prize, inspired in part by Britain's Mercury Music Prize, was created in 2006 with Owen Pallett's band Final Fantasy winning for He Poos Clouds.