THINGS TO DO

June 1: Journeys in Indigo at the ROM

Jenny Balfour-Paul presents a richly illustrated lecture on the world’s only natural blue dye in “Journeys in Indigo: Red Sea to Rajasthan.”

Widely used and traded worldwide for over six millennia and popular today in the slow fashion movement, indigo has a fascinating colonial past reaching as far as rural Bengal and the great trading city of Kolkata.

Balfour-Paul will recount her fieldwork travels in the Arab world and beyond, and how serendipity and a shared passion for this vivid colour led to her discovery, in the depths of the British Library, of the remarkable journals of forgotten explorer and indigo planter Thomas Machell.

The lecture is on June 1 at 6 to 7 p.m.

The Royal Ontario Museum is at 100 Queen’s Park.

See the website for more information.