Justin Trudeau (AP)

BY DOUGLAS PERRY

A persistent internet rumor has led Canada's government to officially deny that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the love child of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

The Associated Press reported the denial Sunday and added that "Cuba has never claimed it and Trudeau's parents never visited Cuba until several years after Justin Trudeau was born."

The website Snopes, which debunks conspiracy theories, pointed out that Trudeau was almost certainly conceived between March 16 and April 22, 1971. The site established that Castro was in Cuba throughout that period and Margaret Trudeau, Justin's mother, wasn't.

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Castro and Pierre Trudeau in 1976. (AP)

Trudeau was born Dec. 25, 1971. His father is the late Pierre Trudeau, who became prime minister of Canada nearly four years before his son’s birth.

The rumor appears to have been birthed on Nov. 27, 2016, two days after Castro's death, when a reddit user posited that Justin Trudeau resembled Castro and falsely stated that Margaret Trudeau had met Castro in 1971.

At the time of the social-media post, Justin Trudeau was being heavily criticized for praising Castro in the wake of the communist tyrant’s death. Pierre Trudeau and Castro had had a friendship in the 1970s and ’80s, and Pierre and Margaret visited Cuba in 1976.

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Margaret Trudeau in 1971. (AP)

Margaret Trudeau, nearly three decades younger than her husband, made tabloid headlines in the 1970s for dancing nights away at New York discos such as Studio 54 while her husband was busy with affairs of state in Ottawa. She infamously had dalliances with celebrities such as actors Ryan O'Neal and Jack Nicholson. Vanity Fair has called her "the Holly Golightly of the Mounties."

She and Pierre divorced in 1984. Justin Trudeau was elected Canada’s prime minister in 2015.

-- Douglas Perry