Mystery sword

It is the sad fate of Jerry Anderson, a native of Powell River, B.C., to own Canada's most alluring antique and yet to know absolutely nothing about it. His metre-long sword, bound at the grip in leather and crudely engraved with a warrior's head and stars, is a mystery to him, just as it was to his father when he found it during the Depression in the cellar of a Medicine Hat, Alta., hotel.

But now, having arrived by plane in Toronto with Mr. Anderson last night, the sword will take pride of place today at the Royal Ontario Museum, where a panel of curators picked it out of hundreds as the country's most interesting privately owned artifact. . .

Other contenders for the honour of most interesting artifact were a Roman soldier's ring inscribed with a pentagram; a mosquito trapped in 28-million-year-old amber; a mammoth tooth; a 3000-year-old sculpture of a duck; an Egyptian pen and ink set; and countless fossils, stone tools and meteorites.

Posted by David on June 17, 2003 10:03 AM