Download I Brought The Ages Home by Charles T. Currelly epub

I read Charles T. Currelly’s autobiography, I Brought The Ages Home, a number of years ago. I found it to be such an interesting book - he was a real life Canadian Indiana Jones, leading archaeological digs and acquiring artifacts. He describes the late 1800s/early 1900s in Canada as a time full of promise and opportunity.

Charles T. Currelly (January 11, 1876 – April 10, 1957) was the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from 1914 to 1946, and acquired much its initial collection. As he passed away over 50 years ago, his autobiography fell into the public domain (note: on December 30, 2022, the general term of copyright protection in Canada changed from 50 to 70 years after the death of the author, but this did not affect works that were already in the public domain). I created an ebook version, as it’s an interesting public domain work that I haven’t seen shared elsewhere and we all benefit from a work with some historical importance being freely available (see /create-epub-from-paperback/ for how it was created). A scanned copy of the book is available from archive.org.

Background

Since reading about James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s work entering the public domain in Canada in 2015, I’ve thought about creating public domain ebooks that I could share online. At the time, I picked up a copy of Octopussy, and scanned it. I ran it through the OCR software bundled with my scanner, and the results were pretty mediocre. At that time, the OCR process was certainly faster than typing, but the output required a lot of manual review - I abandonned the project. In short order, the Canadian Gutenberg team created excellent James Bond ePubs, and I note now that other ones are available from Faded Page.

Headphone Rant

I have been frustrated with earbuds since mobile phone manufactures dropped the 1/8" inch headphone jack - I think this trend started with the iPhone 7 in 2016. After playing around with headphones with proprietary connectors and adapters for almost a decade, I decided to buy wireless ear buds in April 2024. I chose the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II. I haven’t been impressed - mostly due to frustration when they refuse to pair with my phone (my Sony portable speaker is flawless in this regard). My wife/kids seem to do better with various Anker soundcore models. But… the noise cancelling on these Bose earbuds is awesome for sharing a small space, walking in loud urban areas, and traveling on public transit. I had planned to use them until they stop working altogether.

Introduction

I was fortunate to be able to spend time with one of my great-grandmothers, who lived until I was in my early 20s. We great-grandkids knew her as GG. GG was born in Lerwick in 1907. In 1912, her parents moved the family to Scotland’s mainland. She had my grandmother in 1928, and they left Scotland for Canada in 1930. So in 2024, when my wife and I were planning a trip to Scotland, I reviewed GG’s memoirs and added the places she wrote about to our itinerary. Here’s what I was able to find.

Introduction

I was looking for something to read in June, and decided to read Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, the author’s account of his leading the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The book was made into a movie, Lawrence of Arabia. As the author died in 1935, the book is long out of copyright, and I downloaded a free copy from Standard Ebooks.

Paddling is something I’ve associated with canoes and cottage country outside of the city. Living in a small space in Toronto, it didn’t seem like an activity I could take up, even though Toronto is located on the shores of Lake Ontario. That changed when a friend picked up a deeply discounted inflatable paddle board at Winners (an off-price department store) and I got the chance to try it out. It was a blast, I was sold: I picked up a couple myself in 2021.