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OTTAWA — If Parliament Hill has sometimes seemed throughout its history like a boozy, male-dominated powder keg, it’s worth noting that’s partly what it was built on.

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A completely intact, long and thin opium bottle — a common remedy in the day for different aches and pains, as well as cholera.

Two Catholic religious medals, unusual because most of the British officers would have been Protestant

Several smoking pipes, including an unusual one engraved with a beaver and a coureur de bois.

Personal grooming tools such as a lice comb and a toothbrush.

Thousands of pieces of pottery and china imported from England.

An intact Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce bottle and a mustard jar, the kind of condiments an officer might use to spice up his food.

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Recent archeological digs outside some of the main buildings in the precinct have turned up tens of thousands of artifacts from the early 19th century.