My first job out of university was with the then-new Canadian Food Inspection Agency in the late 1990s, which was an amalgamation of staff from three other departments. The consolidation of the country’s food, animal safety and plant health into one place had produced some artifacts, including the quiet man in the corner on the second floor of CFIA HQ who didn’t seem to belong to anyone’s team. Nobody had a clue what he did.

Which isn’t to say the man didn’t turn up to work. He did. Every day. In the same olive green cardigan and khakis, as it happened. But he never spoke to anyone, and God knows what output he produced and where it went. One day, when I asked my director if he knew who the man was and what he did, he replied: “He came from fish (Department of Fisheries and Oceans), but h

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