Teena in Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, ON

Gord and I spent the afternoon at the ROM ... neither of us had been there in many years.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of world culture and natural history. It is one of the largest museums in North America and was established in April 1912 and opened in March 1914.

With more than six million items and forty galleries, the museum's diverse collections of world culture and natural history are part of the reason for its international reputation. The museum contains notable collections of dinosaurs, minerals and meteorites, Near Eastern and African art, Art of East Asia, European history and Canadian history. It also houses the world's largest collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale with more than 150,000 specimens. The museum also contains an extensive collection of design and fine arts, including clothing, interior, and product design, especially Art Deco.

We started off by checking out the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit.

Experience the beauty and power of our natural world as the ROM presents the Canadian premiere of Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Coming from the Natural History Museum in London, Wildlife Photographer of the Year is now in its 50th year and second year at the ROM. This internationally renowned photography competition celebrates nature and wildlife through 100 breathtaking photos, selected from tens of thousands of submissions by photographers of all ages around the world.

We weren't allowed to take any pictures there ... needless to say, the photos were inspiring. Hard to believe that some were taken by kids as young as ten!

As we entered the museum, we were greeted by Futalognkosaurus.

There was a Christmas tree in the rotunda.

We checked out the Canadiana gallery ... the Sigmund Samuel gallery displays collections of early Canadian memorabilia. The majority of the collection is historical decorative and pictorial arts, but also includes a number of historical artifacts among other things. The gallery has approximately 560 artifacts on display and covers the period from early European settlement to the beginning of the modern industrial era. The displays are split up into sections to display the strength and weaknesses of the collections and strongly reflect the French and British cultural heritage of Canada.

Gord at the War of 1812 display

Illustration - Rex Woods

Illustration - Arthur Heming

A panelled room from the Bélanger house,
an urban Quebec household in the early 19th century

Habitant by Cornelius Krieghoff, c.1855

Hannah Owen Jarvis with her daughters,
Maria Lavinia and Augusta Honoria, c.1792

William Jarvis and his son, Samuel Peters, c.1792

Pierre and Marie-Zoe Persillier dit Lachapelle, c.1834

Sir Edmund Walker @1918

We passed by the Nisga'a and Haida Crest Poles on our way to the Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada: First Peoples.

The Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada: First Peoples which provides a look inside the culture of Canada's earliest societies: the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada. The gallery contains more than 1,000 artifacts that help to reveal the economic and social forces that have influenced Native art.

This is a house post which was used inside
Northwestern peoples' homes to hold up the roof

Kids were able to hold a live snake

We headed to the second floor the check out the dinosaurs and passed by the top of one of the totem poles.

This is looking up at the ceiling of the rotunda.

That all man may know his work"

There's Futalognkosaurus and I.

The James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs and Gallery of the Age of Mammals feature many examples of complete dinosaur skeletons, as well as those of early birds, reptiles, mammals and marine animals, ranging from the Jurassic to Cretaceous periods. The Reed Gallery of the Age of Mammals explores the rise of mammals through the Cenozoic Era that followed the extinction of the dinosaurs. There are over 400 specimens from North America and South America on display. Also included in the gallery are 30 fossil skeletons of extinct mammals, over 160 non-mammalian specimens, and hundreds of fossil plants, insects, fish, and turtles.

We headed to the third floor to check out the Ancient gallery.

Yogini, India, 10th century

Untitled, India, 2002

Statue of the Goddess Sakhmet, 1417-1379BC

Roman coffin

Co-Emperor Lucius Verus

Standing youth

Venus draped in a chiton and a himation

Ancient cyclandic sculpture

Dionysos - God of Wine

Cupid with a quiver

Head of Zeus

Head of young Herakles

He was sketching the head

Gold wreaths for Greek funerals

Head of a beardless wreathed youth

Irish gold

Emperor Tiberius

Roman sculpture

Plaster casts from Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple

Statue fragment of Cleopatra VII

Mummy-case of Djedmaatesankh

Gold Roman bracelets (200-300AD)

Gold Roman earrings and rings (50-150AD)

The Samuel European Galleries have over 4,600 objects that chronicle the development of decorative and other arts in Europe from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The period rooms depict the development of decorative arts in Central and Western Europe by showcasing changes in style during the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical and Victorian periods. Other specialized collections relating to Culture and Context, Judaica, Art Deco and Arms and Armour are also displayed.