Kevin Smith and Stacy Mistysyn on the set of "Degrassi: The Next Generation."

When geek-chic film director Kevin Smith's next film Passion of the Clerks hits movie screens, you can blame Canada.

In Winnipeg yesterday to promote his guests spots on CTV series Degrassi: The Next Generation, Smith says the creative success of the TV show inspired him to go back to the strip mall for the Clerks sequel.

A fan of the original Degrassi -- he first saw it on PBS in 1991, while he was, yes, clerking at a New Jersey convenience store -- Smith says he was wary when producer Linda Schuyler launched Degrassi: The Next Generation.

"But then after, when I saw the episodes myself and fell in love with it ... I was like, 'Wow, Schuyler can go back and revisit Degrassi and improve it, you know; s--t, I can try and do the same thing," he says.

Smith says he's so grateful, he volunteered to embark on a four-city press tour to promote the show, which has yet to hit the million-viewer mark in Canada, although it's huge in the U.S., where it airs on 'tween network The N.

"I said, 'Maybe with these episodes, if we go out and promote the s--t out of them that'll do it, because you've got your regular audience and maybe a few of my people will show up and suddenly you'll cross that number.' I'd feel pretty sweet about that, if they could do that."

To that end, Smith, 34, met local press at the Fairmont Hotel yesterday, after stops earlier this week in Vancouver and Calgary.

Sporting his trademark short pants and tattered deck shoes, he explains he was drawn to the original series because the characters looked like real high school kids, and the show touched on topics like abortion without being judgmental.

At 21, he had a crush on one character in particular: Environmental do-gooder Caitlyn Ryan (Stacie Mistysyn), with whom he got to suck face during his Degrassi: TNG guest run.

"I go for Canadian chicks in a big way and I also go for any chick that has a workable handicap -- like we're not talking about somebody who is missing half their body or something but like epilepsy," he says.

"Caitlyn's thing was epilepsy and you're just like, 'Oh, she's so vulnerable' and you just wanna protect her ... She was like my ideal kind of girlfriend. If that character existed it would be awesome."

But Caitlyn is not real. And Smith takes pains to point out his crush does not extend to actress Mistysyn.

"She's an actor. And I mean I like Stacie, but she's not an epileptic."

Smith is somewhat fictionalized in the show, too, playing a single man. In real life, he's married and has a four-year-old daughter, Harley Quinn. And wife Jennifer wasn't happy when he told her about the slight deviation from reality.

"She was like, 'You let them write me out of your life?' And not wanting to admit to the fact that I kinda came up with the story, I was like, 'Well it's their show, hon, I can't really tell them what to do.' And it was only later that I copped to the complicity."

But he says having a cameo role -- Jennifer plays a slate girl on the fake film set in the third episode -- took the sting out of the slight.

Smith, whose hits and misses include 1994 breakout Clerks and several films with Ben Affleck (Jersey Girl, Chasing Amy, Mallrats), originally offered to direct a Degrassi episode, but Schuyler said no because the show's key staff have to be Canadian.

"Which was the first time I'd ever been told no with that reason -- you can't do it because you're not Canadian. But she said, 'How would you like a cameo?' So I wrote her back a week later with this idea of a three-episode arc."

Smith shows up at Degrassi to research a new movie, Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh? His Clerks sidekick Jason Mewes appears next Monday, along with Los Angeles-based Canuck singer Alanis Morissette, who played God in Smith's films Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

"I said, 'Do you want to come up and play the principal in the fake movie we're doing in the show?' She was really sweet about it," he says. "That's one of the nicest things anybody's ever done for me, was just to jump on a plane and come to Toronto just to shoot that one scene.

"But just because she knew it meant a lot to me, that was really kind of cool of her."

Now, Smith would like to do an entire episode in which Morissette just plays herself. And he's already thinking of making his own comeback when Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh? makes its fake screen debut.

"I told them I gotta come back next season to premiere the movie."