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Close up of a statu of a lion

Fu lions on Queens Park, China, June 2013

You Shall Not Pass

This page is protected by our Guardian Lion. But try another one!

Before you go, did you know:

  • Margaret Atwood's 1979 novel, Life Before Man, features a female palaeontologist who works in the ROM's labs. At one point in the story, dinosaurs break out of the building and descend on the Bloor St. Colonnade!
  • The ROM has many animals in its collection that used to live at the Toronto Zoo. Three are on display: Bull (the White rhino), Doni (the Komodo dragon), and Arminius (nicknamed Gus, the Vancouver Island marmot).
  • The ROM's dual mandate is carved on either side of the Queen's Park doors: world cultures, "The arts of man through all the years" and natural history, "The record of nature through countless ages."
  • The oldest object in the ROM is the Allende meteorite. It contains minerals from the formation of the solar system… 4.5 billion years ago!
  • Charles Trick Currelly, the ROM's co-founder and first curator, used to walk the halls in his nightshirt after hours (he had a cot in his office)… and he still does! Many staff recount tales of seeing Currelly's ghost passing through the halls.
  • When famed Canadian director James Cameron was a boy, he saw a submersible, called Subliminos, on a truck outside the ROM. This sparked his lifelong pursuit of deep sea exploration.
  • The ROM became the ROM on April 16, 1912 under Bill 138. But the news was overshadowed by another story: two days earlier the RMS Titanic sank during its maiden voyage.
  • The oldest book in the ROM's library is De re libellus vestiaria (The Little Book of Clothing). It was published in Paris in 1541, and it's a second edition!