Jerry Ciccoritti is the eight-time-Gemini-winning director of such projects as The Many Trials of One Jane Doe and Trudeau.

When I won my second Gemini Award for best director, I gave the statue to my parents to display in their home. Naturally, my mother was thrilled. She held it and gazed wistfully at it.

She said, ‘Gee, I wish I could have been there.’ So I said, ‘Mom, if I get nominated next year, I’ll take you and Dad.’ Of course, what are the odds, right?

Surprise, surprise. The very next year I get nominated again. So, of course, I got tickets for my parents. I also shelled out for one of my sisters. Her job was to look after them while I ran around sucking up to people.

My parents were star-struck. I think the biggest moment came when Albert Schultz waved to me across the room, just before the show. My mother gasped, ‘Albert Schultz knows YOU?!’

So far, so good. I figured that was their big moment for the evening.

Imagine my shock when my name was called. On stage I said how excited I was to be able to quote Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy and actually say, ‘My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. And my sister thanks you.’

Now, I figure THAT’S the big moment in the evening.

No way. After the backstage interviews, I wend my way back to my table. I let my mother hug me for what seemed like 30 minutes. I turned to my father, sitting stiffly in that Italian immigrant way. He reached out his hand to shake mine. And he says to me: ‘Remember when you were 12 years old and you wanted a guitar and I said ‘No’?’

After un-kinking my neck from that segue I say, ‘Yeah. Kinda. What about it?’

My father says, ‘I just want to say I’m sorry.’

In the moment that followed, I realized what my father was feeling. Like most working-class immigrants with a healthy suspicion of the Arts, he had done everything he could to dissuade me from throwing away my future. But now he was thinking I had made it on my own, and he was sorry he hadn’t helped me.

This isn’t a typical Academy story. But my father and I had a huge moment that night, and it was only because of what happened through the Academy. That’s an award from them that means more than all the statues in the world.

Thanks. And Happy Anniversary.