The short film The Fast Runner, which was shot in the Greater Victoria area, won a 2025 Leo Award in cinematography for David Bercovici-Artieda. Bercovici-Artieda was also nominated for best direction, and the piece had six nominations in total.
The Leo Awards are a Project of the Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Foundation of British Columbia. This year, there were more than 1,300 eligible entries in 16 different program categories.
In addition to nominations for direction and cinematography, The Fast Runner was nominated for screenwriting (Michael Adams), production design (Sarah Monteith), costume design (Constance Moerman and Josie Saldat) and make-up (Teia Dumaresq, Akina McCrea, Lindsay Pilkey, Donia Nikoo, Naomi Burnell and Mayhanna Haslam).
“It’s not just about telling a story,” Bercovici-Artieda, the son of a Holocaust survivor, told the Independent earlier this year. “It’s about honouring the memory of those who lived through unimaginable horrors, including my own father. Every frame, every scene and every creative choice carries the weight of history – my family’s history.” (See jewishindependent.ca/balancing-education-and-art.)
For more about Bercovici-Artieda, the film and the many other awards and recognition it has received, visit thefastrunnerfilm.com.
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At its annual general meeting last month, the Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society for Education and Remembrance presented its annual Life Fellow Award to Sidi Schaffer and Keith Morgan. The award is given to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to Holocaust education and remembrance.
Sidi is a Holocaust survivor and talented artist whose life and work are powerful testaments to resilience and remembrance.
Born in northern Romania, Sidi was just a child when she and her family were forced into the Czernowitz ghetto in 1940, and later deported to the Djurin concentration camp in what’s now Ukraine. They endured unimaginable hardship for four years before returning to Romania in 1945. Sidi later moved to Israel, where she earned her degree in art education, and eventually settled in Canada with her husband David and their three sons.
After completing a bachelor of fine arts at the University of Alberta, Sidi continued to use art as a way of processing and sharing her experience. Her piece “Earth, Don’t Cover Their Blood” (featured in the VHEC’s 1998 Gesher Project) remains a moving tribute to those lost – and a powerful educational tool.
Sidi continues to share her story and use her art to bear witness as a long-time member of the VHEC’s Child Survivor Group.
Keith, a best-selling author and award-winning journalist, has dedicated his work to preserving Holocaust memory.
Born in Blackpool, England, in 1954, he moved to Vancouver in 1980, where he became a columnist on cars and motoring for the Province and Sun newspapers.
In 1997, he wrote a newspaper feature about Ruth Kron Sigal and her community impact. Moved by Ruth’s family story and motivated by his own limited knowledge of the Holocaust in the Baltics, Keith collaborated with Ruth, the eldest daughter of Meyer and Gita Kron, on her memoir, Ruta’s Closet (Shavl Publishing, 2008), about the murder of 200,000 Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust and the Kron Sigal family’s survival during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania.
Keith worked on Ruta’s Closet while working as a journalist, researching daily, conducting interviews and using his holidays to travel across Europe, Israel and North America. Since its publication in 2008, the book has become a vital educational resource. According to historian Sir Martin Gilbert, it is “one of the finest Holocaust memoirs.”
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Wendy Cocchia, lieutenant governor of British Columbia, has accepted to serve as honorary patron of the Holocaust Theatre Production Society’s Survivors program. Patronage, in the spirit of supporting and encouraging meaningful initiatives, is a role of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, rooted in the Crown’s tradition of recognizing and uplifting worthy endeavours.
The play Survivors, by Wendy Kout, is an hour-long educational drama that enacts the story of the Holocaust through eyewitness testimony of 10 survivors. Young and diverse audiences relate to the young and diverse cast, who are guides on the perilous journey of their ever-changing world. The survivors in the play also provide life lessons and encouragement to speak up and act up against hatred and bullying today. Suitable for young adult and adult audiences, this play about the past is a warning and a wakeup call for the present and the future.
As of June 30, Survivors was booked for more than 30 performances across Vancouver Island, bringing the society’s Holocaust education program to middle and high schools, both public and private, as far north as Campbell River.
Thank you to the Victoria Foundation for their support, which will ensure that the program can be delivered to Victoria schools in October.
Visit holocausttheatre.com for more information and to watch the trailer.
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Last month, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre presented the 2025 Meyer and Gita Kron and Ruth Kron Sigal Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education to Chantel Parsons. Chantel has consistently demonstrated an exceptional commitment to Holocaust education throughout her career, significantly impacting her students, colleagues and the broader school community.
Chantel is a geography and history teacher at Mark R. Isfeld Secondary School in the Comox Valley. The teacher’s Genocide 12 course, which centres on the Holocaust, remains one of the most popular senior-level electives at her school, drawing students eager to engage deeply with this critical history.
Chantel’s approach to Holocaust education is marked by historical precision, critical inquiry and meaningful impact. Her students explore complex issues around historical responsibility and the roles of perpetrators, victims, bystanders and resistors, challenging simplified narratives and examining the complexities of human behaviour during the Holocaust.
The lasting influence of her teaching is reflected in the words of a former student: “You were probably one of the best teachers I had. The focus you put on the atrocities in WWII, and the effort you put into teaching us how to recognize the patterns that lead up to events like this made me question a lot of things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise…. I often think back to things I learned in your class.”
A distinctive feature of Chantel’s teaching is her focus on Holocaust denial and distortion – topics often underrepresented in high school curricula. Her students study landmark Canadian legal cases concerning Holocaust denial, and benefit from guest speakers and witnesses connected to these cases.
Despite teaching in the smaller community of Courtenay, Chantel’s students access extensive enrichment opportunities through VHEC’s online programs. This year, her class participated in multiple live Zoom workshops, survivor speaker presentations, virtual exhibition tours and accessed a wealth of online teaching materials.
The Kron Sigal Award was established in memory of Meyer and Gita Kron and their daughter Ruth Kron Sigal, Lithuanian Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who reestablished their lives in Vancouver. Through their lifelong involvement with education and community, the family touched the lives of thousands of students. The award in their name is presented annually to British Columbian teachers who have demonstrated excellence and commitment to teaching students about the Holocaust and its important lessons for humankind.
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Gerri Klein recently celebrated 50 years as a nurse! She was part of the first nursing class from the Winnipeg Health Science Centre School of Nursing.
During her career, Gerri, who now has a master’s in nursing (2003, University of British Columbia), has been honoured with the Canadian Diabetes Educator of the Year Award in 2020 and a Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of BC 2023 Nursing Award of Excellence: Excellence in Advancing Nursing Knowledge and Research. She currently works as a diabetes educator at BC Diabetes in Vancouver.
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Aaron Klein graduated from the University of Toronto with a doctor of philosophy, aerospace studies, department of mechanical and industrial engineering, on June 17, 2025. Aaron, who is working and living in Toronto, stays busy raising his young family with his wife Carolyn.
