Royal Ontario Museum

And Dominic, we get complaints sometimes, don't we, from Canadian listeners that we don't have enough mentions of Canada on this podcast.

But I gather that some of this loot even found its way to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

So that's a lovely little nod to our Canadian listener, Mark Harney there, because I know he's a big fan of The Rest is History, and he will enjoy that, that moment.

So yeah, those are treasures carried off by British troops after they stormed the mountain citadel of Magdala to rescue almost 60 European hostages this emperor, uh, Theodore Tewodros II, was holding.

That's really cool.

We also have the Royal Ontario Museum, the ROM.

It holds all the natural history and culture stuff.

It also has like a bunch of rotating exhibits as well, which is pretty cool.

I think he got it at a used book sale.

It was published in 1968, I believe, uh, by the University of Toronto Press, published for the, uh, Royal Ontario Museum.

And yeah, reprinted 1971.

Handbook of the Crayfishes of Ontario by Denton W. Crocker and David W. Barr.

yeah the trickle down impact of something like that is so huge uh brendan do you could you share a story about the human side

Yeah, the first time I ever got to meet the folks at Flap Canada, I attended one of their annual, what are called bird layout events at the Royal Ontario Museum.

And FLAP, what they have volunteers do throughout the year is they patrol the streets of the greater Toronto area and they collect birds that have tragically been injured or killed colliding with a building.

We'll try and get the injured birds to a rehab center so they can receive care.

Uh, she was good.

And then that evening, uh, after the, uh, the Royal Ontario Museum.

And I think we used, we used the subway to get to the museum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then day four, we took the subway.

It was the same subway we took to the Royal Ontario Museum, except a little bit further out, a little bit further away.

We went to the Casa Loma.

people can fill in

wait what on their own yeah exactly i thought you'd dig out the old hydrazilla suit but uh apparently not that's long gone it's in the royal ontario museum probably

Yeah, it's not in the Royal BC Museum.

I don't think they have any exhibits anymore.

[audience laughs] And it's your party now.

[laughs] [audience laughs] Now, I ask you, if museums didn't make you smarter, why would so many schools go to them on field trips? Now, when I went with my 10th grade class to the Royal Ontario Museum, did I learn about the incestuous royal families of Egypt? No.

[audience laughs] But did I learn that Martina Pellegrino, names have been changed to protect the innocent, was dating her cousin? [audience laughs] Yes.

Did I learn about Roman coins? No.

It's been documented that GlobalX has carried out deportations that violate court orders, where people are put on board, um, in violation of due process, separated from their families.

Last year, when it emerged the executive chairman of GlobalX was a board director at the Royal Ontario Museum, he resigned the museum position.

And just a month before those flights to El Salvador in February 2025, the husband of Hamilton Mountain MPP Monica Ciriello declared at the legislature he owned at least $2,500 in shares of GlobalX.

Ciriello is Ontario's parliamentary assistant to the attorney general, meaning her purview is the courts and justice.

I used to, I used to...

When, when I was, uh, working at, when I was doing interviews w- at TSN and working on Cabby Presents, I would often go to the art gallery for inspiration or The Royal Ontario Museum, and just look at...

I remember there was this one David Bowie exhibit which was really eclectic and it helped me in a brainstorm to interview Will Ferrell.

And I would just like, I just, I saw there was a m- uh, an installation where he's looking at himself in the mirror.