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MONTREAL – A little-known connection between Canada and Abraham Lincoln’s assassin will quietly mark an anniversary this week: it’s been 150 years since John Wilkes Booth hobnobbed with Confederate leaders in Montreal.

Six months after Booth’s October 1864 visit, he shot the president in the back of the head.

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Clues have pointed to Booth’s mysterious trip to Montreal as a precursor to Lincoln’s April 1865 assassination in a Washington theatre. At the time, the pro-Southern cause enjoyed considerable sympathy in Montreal, which was also known as a haunt for agents of the Confederacy.

Conclusive evidence, however, tying the murder plot to Booth’s nine-day Montreal stay was never established by authorities.

“Booth was definitely in and out (of Montreal), and he may well have discussed this plan, but they were never able to nail it,” said author Adam Mayers, who wrote Dixie & the Dominion: Canada, the Confederacy and the War for the Union.