Charles T. Currelly

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.