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There are mysteries beyond the ken of us mortals. How Star Wars came to be accepted as entertainment will torment the minds of the future’s great thinkers till the sun is a black blot in a dead universe. Quantum entanglement is another perplexity, on a scale with Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, both matters that entoil the deepest thinkers, and will without abatement for generations to come.

Mostly we recoil from mysteries of such power. They trouble us, and almost out of fear we are content to leave them dormant and unanswered. In the words of the surly German: Do not stare into the abyss, for it may stare back at you.

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Fortunately, there are some rare people who have the courage to pursue the very darkest, most enigmatic questions, regardless of the cost to mental peace or even sanity itself. Such is our PM, Justin Trudeau, the very Galahad of fearless inquiry.

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Near midweek, the announcement came that his government would fund, by nearly $300,000, research into the deepest and most unsettling riddle of our entire national life: Why is our Canadian oil and gas sector falling behind? The fate of the Franklin expedition, which troubled us for so long, was just a Cracker Jack puzzle compared to this conundrum.