To the scientists

Over the main entrance of Ottawa’s National Research Laboratories at 100 Sussex Drive is carved an inscription chosen by the wartime Prime Minister, William Lyon MacKenzie King, which I noted down the other day because I think it is so apposite to science. It is a quotation from the 2nd Book of Esdras, in the Apocrypha:

Great is truth and mighty above all things. It endureth and is always strong. It liveth and conquereth for ever more. The more thou searchest, the more thou shalt marvel.”

Here’s a picture I took of the Rideau Falls adjacent to 100 Sussex Drive:

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