BCAM: A Tribute to Crystal Kramer 1974-2011

By Sarah Dyer on October 5, 2011

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As October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, I wanted to take a moment to remember a special person we lost this year to a battle with breast cancer at the age of 36. Crystal Kramer was an acquaintance of mine and a dear friend to one of my best friends. She was a mom, wife, entrepreneur and one of the craziest people I’ve ever met. She was loud and funny and not scared of anything, or so it seemed to me.

She first felt a lump in her breast when she was breastfeeding her daughter, Lena. It was a small tumor but very aggressive (as is often the case in women under 40). She underwent chemotherapy following a double mastectomy and 30 lymph nodes removed. Shortly after, she was cancer free. The cancer unfortunately returned last fall and she passed away when Lena was only 4 years old. A fierce fighter and always positive, she had the mental drive and determination to beat it, but as we all know the disease is relentless and took a special person far too early.

Crystal was in the Toronto casting business for eleven years, the last seven as a casting director with her own company, Crystal Casting. Her casting credits include working on feature films with producer/director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man & director John Madden for Killshot (Madden also directed Proof & Shakespeare in Love). She cast many series and films for Discovery Channel, National Geographic, History Channel, Global, A&E, and Life/Slice Network.

Her Independent Features have been in the Toronto Film Festival, Sprockets Film Festival and numerous short films she cast have won awards. Casting for Feist’s music video “1,2,3,4” was nominated for a Grammy for best music video. One of her short films made YouTube’s first position on their home page with over 600,000 hits. All of this I never actually knew until I looked it up. She was amazing at her job but would rather have fun than talk about work.

Owning her own casting company meant she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, working and being a mom all at the same time; a feat that not many of us could consider managing. So let’s count our blessings, hug our children and remember a woman who took every moment of her life to actually live.

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