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Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Royal Ontario Museum CEO Josh Basseches to depart at end of 2025, no successor named
The Royal Ontario Museum's chief executive officer Josh Basseches will leave his post later this year after nearly a decade. Canada's most-visited museum is in the midst of a $130-million transformation billed as OpenROM. Launched under Basseches's watch, it's intended to reimagine much of the ROM's main floor, redesign its Bloor Street West entrance and add 6,000 square feet of new gallery space. Basseches announced his departure from the culture, natural-history and art museum Thursday morning. He will remain in the role until the end of 2025. The museum did not announce a successor, but in a press release, said that its board of trustees would immediately start searching for a replacement. 'With the museum well-positioned for its next chapter, this feels like the right moment for me to head towards new challenges and seize new opportunities,' Basseches said in the release. Postmedia CEO Andrew MacLeod, who was recently appointed as the ROM board of trustees' chair, said in a statement that the search for a new ROM chief would 'be informed and inspired by the impressive trajectory' Basseches set for the museum. Like many cultural institutions, the ROM has spent the past five years reckoning with an unpredictable economic environment: revenue-shattering pandemic lockdowns followed by surging inflation and interest rates. While the province of Ontario has provided 'stabilization' grants since Covid-19 first struck in 2020, its baseline operating grant for the museum has hovered around $27.3-million for more than a decade.
Observer
27-05-2025
- Science
- Observer
This Fossil's 3 Eyes Are Not Its Most Surprising Feature
More than 500 million years before 'The Simpsons' introduced us to Blinky, a fish with an extra eye swimming through Springfield's Old Fishin' Hole, a three-eyed predator chased prey through seas of the Cambrian Period. Known as Mosura fentoni, this creature is a worthy addition to the bizarre bestiary preserved in the Burgess Shale, a fossil deposit in the Canadian Rockies. But the animal's anatomy, described in the journal Royal Society Open Science, shows it may not be as alien as it looks. The first Mosura specimen was unearthed by a paleontologist more than a century ago. Over recent decades, paleontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto have uncovered many more Mosura fossils, which they nicknamed 'sea moths' because of flaps that help them swim. Sea moths were not fish, but they were related to radiodonts, a group of arthropods that dominated Cambrian food chains. But a closer inspection would not occur until Mosura specimens were unearthed in 2012 in a Burgess Shale outcrop. Having both old and new specimens encouraged researchers to 'finally figure this animal out,' said Joseph Moysiuk, who studied the Marble Canyon fossils as a doctoral student. Moysiuk teamed up with his adviser at the Royal Ontario Museum, Jean-Bernard Caron, to examine 60 sea moth specimens. The specimens were photographed under polarized light to capture the flattened fossils' detailed anatomy. A defining feature of living arthropods is the division of their bodies into specialized parts. For example, crustaceans like crabs have different appendages adapted to perform certain functions like feeding or walking. Fossils of many early arthropod ancestors reveal relatively simple body plans. Researchers have therefore long proposed that segmentation took a long time to evolve. Mosura bucks this trend. Despite measuring only 2.5 inches long, the creature's body was divided into as many as 26 segments. 'It's something that we've never seen in this group of animals before,' said Moysiuk, who is now at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. In addition to its wide swimming flaps, the animal possessed a highly segmented trunk at the back of its body brimming with gills, resembling the abdomenlike structures that horseshoe crabs, woodlice and some insects use to breathe. — JACK TAMISIEA / NYT
Roya News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Roya News
Thuraya wins global award for launch video; cookbook ranks among top 4 worldwide
A Jordanian-produced video for the acclaimed cookbook Thuraya: Recipes from Our Family's Kitchen in Jordan has won Best Video for Book Launch at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, setting the stage for further recognition as the book vies for three additional global honors this June. Authored and self-published in Canada by Jordanian-Canadian writer Nadeem Mansour, Thuraya is now a finalist in three major categories: Best Mediterranean Book, Best Family Book, and the coveted Best of the Best award—where it stands as one of only four books competing for the top honour, having already earned the Best of the Best logo. As the first English-language Jordanian cookbook to reach this level of international acclaim, the achievement underscores the power of diasporic storytelling and its ability to resonate across cultures. 'This journey began in my mother's kitchen in Amman and came to life here in Canada,' said Mansour. 'To have our video recognized as Best Video for Book Launch is a deeply emotional milestone, especially ahead of what could be a historic showing for the book itself.' Filmed and produced in Jordan, the award-winning video captures the heart of Thuraya through vivid storytelling, culinary artistry, and emotional connection. Viewers are invited into a world of aromatic spices, generational memories, and shared meals that transcend borders. The video was named after the author's mother. Thuraya is both a tribute to family and a celebration of the immigrant experience. It features over 120 recipes that bridge cultural traditions and modern tastes, bringing the warmth of Levantine cuisine into kitchens across the world. First launched in Amman in July 2024, the book was introduced to Canadian audiences at the Royal Ontario Museum in February 2025, as part of the museum's ROM Talks series and in collaboration with its renowned Widad Kawar Collection of Arab heritage.
Jordan News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Jordan News
'Thuraya Wins Global Award for Launch Video; Cookbook Ranks Among Top 4 Worldwide Ahead of Prestigious Gourmand Finals'
A Jordanian-produced video for the acclaimed cookbook Thuraya: Recipes from Our Family's Kitchen in Jordan has won Best Video for Book Launch at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, setting the stage for further recognition as the book vies for three additional global honors this June. اضافة اعلان Authored and self-published in Canada by Jordanian-Canadian writer Nadeem Mansour, Thuraya is now a finalist in three major categories: Best Mediterranean Book, Best Family Book, and the coveted Best of the Best award—where it stands as one of only four books competing for the top honour, having already earned the Best of the Best logo. As the first English-language Jordanian cookbook to reach this level of international acclaim, the achievement underscores the power of diasporic storytelling and its ability to resonate across cultures. 'This journey began in my mother's kitchen in Amman and came to life here in Canada,' said Mansour. 'To have our video recognized as Best Video for Book Launch is a deeply emotional milestone, especially ahead of what could be a historic showing for the book itself.' Filmed and produced in Jordan, the award-winning video captures the heart of Thuraya through vivid storytelling, culinary artistry, and emotional connection. Viewers are invited into a world of aromatic spices, generational memories, and shared meals that transcend borders. The video, which can be viewed at Named after the author's mother, Thuraya is both a tribute to family and a celebration of the immigrant experience. It features over 120 recipes that bridge cultural traditions and modern tastes, bringing the warmth of Levantine cuisine into kitchens across the world. First launched in Amman in July 2024, the book was introduced to Canadian audiences at the Royal Ontario Museum in February 2025, as part of the museum's ROM Talks series and in collaboration with its renowned Widad Kawar Collection of Arab heritage. As the final ceremony in Lisbon approaches, the global literary and culinary communities are watching closely. With one global prize already in hand, Thuraya is poised to make history once again.
CBC
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
ImagineNATIVE celebrates 25 years of Indigenous cinema in summer event
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto celebrates its 25th year in 2025 with a move to summer. Naomi Johnson, the festival's executive director, said she's hoping the festival's new June dates will set them apart from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In previous years, imagineNATIVE was held in October about a month after TIFF. "We had to get away from that fall season," she said. "It's just very packed in the city, especially because we're the first festival to follow TIFF, so it was getting very unmanageable in trying to get our events noticed. She said this year they've been able to collaborate and cross-promote with other organizations and events across the city which she thinks is a result of the festival's new date. This year there are 20 feature films, 79 short films, 14 digital and interactive works and 17 audio works. "We have 55 Indigenous nations from all around the world. There's going to be 27 Indigenous languages represented from 16 different countries," Johnson said. Recently confirmed, Johnson said, is the festival's Art Crawl event on June 5 at the Royal Ontario Museum that will feature Cree artist Kent Monkman's alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. This year will also include a retrospective of the festival's 25 years. "A big part of the theme is looking back, acknowledging those that got us here and holding the space now for those that are going to take it one day," Johnson said. Johnson said her work has brought her to other parts of the world where Indigenous populations are not even recognized by the government. "It's kind of a brag, you know, that we have this festival in Canada and it's a tribute to Canada's support of the arts," she said. Festival launches careers Trevor Solway, a Blackfoot filmmaker from Siksika Nation, said the festival helped launch his career. It's where he met Jason Ryle, imagineNATIVE's longtime artistic director, who went on to produce a few of Solway's projects. "My very first film called Indian Giver was developed with their mentorship program and it really was like the start of everything for me in filmmaking," Solway told CBC Indigenous. He has three works in the festival this year: a feature-length documentary and two short films. Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man is a cinéma vérité-style documentary, filmed over four years, that explores masculinity within his community. "We've always been this kind of savage Indian or been like this noble Indian. Rarely are we seen as multidimensional people," he said. Settler is an 11-minute horror film about an 1800s family that moves to Blackfoot Country and is visited by the Blackfoot trickster Napi. Pendleton Man is another short horror film about three young Blackfoot cousins home alone who are haunted by the Pendleton Man. Of the festival's new date, Solway said it's important for festivals to change and evolve. "I'm looking forward to seeing what that looks like in the summer months and during National Indigenous Peoples Month," he said. Singer/songwriter Lacey Hill from Six Nations and two-time Juno award-winner Derek Miller will be performing at the imagineNATIVE awards presentation, where the August Schellenberg Award of Excellence will be presented to actor Graham Greene. Hill said she's been a long-time festival attendee and performer. "I've been watching imagineNATIVE form over the years and been a part of it too with music videos," she said. "It can stand on its own because it's got all this support." The in-person festival runs June 3-8 with most screenings at the TIFF Lightbox theatre in Toronto. ImagineNATIVE's online festival runs June 9-15.
