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There’s something so nutty about the polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon communities in Canada and the United States that it’s easy to dismiss it all as a bad tabloid joke.

It is incomprehensible to most of us that anyone — even Canada’s best-known polygamist Winston Blackmore — could have 145 children. But the 59-year-old does. The latest addition to the family was born earlier this month.

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Siring so many offspring requires many wives, which he’s had. There were 24 listed on the 2014 indictment on one count of polygamy. Some left him and the community of Bountiful, B.C. before he was charged. Others have taken their places.

It bears repeating that polygamy is illegal in Canada and the United States. It was upheld here in 2011. This week, a U.S. federal appeal court upheld the American law in a decision ruling against Kody Brown and his wives from the TV show, Sister Wives.

But it’s not just the number of wives and children that’s startling. In a Utah courtroom in 2014, Blackmore admitted under oath that 10 of his 24 “wives” were under the age of 18.