I Brought the Ages Home is the intriguing story of how a boy born in southwestern Ontario and trained for the ministry became one of Canada's great archaeological pioneers and museum-builders - nothing less than a homegrown Indiana Jones. Described by scholar Dennis Duffy as the Royal Ontario Museum's own "Genesis narrative," I Brought the Ages Home is a lively, adventure-packed memoir that traces Currelly's life from his childhood in Exeter, Ontario, to Victoria College in Toronto, and on to Egypt, Crete, and Asia Minor, where he established his reputation as one of the era's most energetic and passionate collectors of antiquities. Later chapters describe Currelly's work as the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology and how he "brought the ages home" to the corner of Bloor Street and Queen's Park in Toronto. General readers and students of archaeology and museology alike will treasure this behind-the-scenes account of the making of one of Canada's great cultural institutions. This new edition includes a special afterword by Dennis Duffy of the University of Toronto that sets Currelly's autobiography in a modern context, as well as the original introduction by Northrop Frye. The result is a book that is at once an engaging autobiography and unique insider's perspective on the formative years of a cultural cornerstone that, with its recent renovations, is once again the focus of national attention.

Charles T. Currelly's profile page

Born in Exeter, Ontario, C. T. Currelly was educated at Victoria College, receiving his B.A.in 1898 and M.A. in 1902. He then set out to do archaeological fieldwork in Egypt, particularly at Tell al-Maskhuta, and later in Crete and Asia Minor. These expeditions were mainly for the purpose of collecting artifacts, however, and these formed the core of a small museum he established at Victoria College, which became the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology in 1907, with Currelly its first curator. At first it remained at Victoria College, but the Ontario Legislature's passage of the ROM Act on 16 April 1912, made it a provincial museum, and Currelly and Sir Byron Edmund Walker, a banker, raised funds for the existing building at the corner of Bloor and Avenue Road. The new museum opened its doors on 19 March 1914, following dedication by HRH the Duke of Connaught. From 1914 until 1946, when he retired, Currelly served as ROM's director. The ROM was part of the University of Toronto for many decades, and housed the Department of Anthropology in its early years. Even today many of its curators are cross-appointed as university faculty. Currelly's autobiography, I Brought the Ages Home appeared in 1956, shortly before his death in Baltimore, Maryland. There is a story that ROM guards have reported seeing the ghostly figure of a gentleman in a nightshirt, resembling C.T. Currelly, wandering among the museum displays at night