A Culture Builder

You'd never mistake him for Indiana Jones. Still, how Charles Trick Currelly, a small-town boy from Ontario, drifted into the booming field of archaeology at the turn of the 20th century, gained the attention of a group of wealthy Torontonians intent on putting their city on the world cultural map, and ended up at the centre of a new, major Canadian cultural institution is a compelling tale. We love these kinds of stories, their narrative arc propelling their teller from obscurity to fame. They validate our sense of the potential for greatness lying hidden in all of us. This ascent—from Exeter, Ontario, to first director of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology—Currelly chronicles in his 1956 memoir, I Brought the Ages Home, which is being reissued.

Whether regaling Victoria College’s Senior Common Room with his tales of archaeological discovery and institutional derring-do or thrilling radio audiences with accounts of the ROM’s collections...