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Barely 100 days before planned celebrations to mark the bicentennial of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth in Glasgow, Scotland, the Canadian government has joined in an 11th-hour search for the precise birthplace of the country’s founding prime minister.

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After a Postmedia News archival discovery earlier this month bolstered the possibility Macdonald was born in what is now a derelict, downtown Glasgow commercial building — a former pub and massage parlour that’s still standing but slated for demolition — Foreign Affairs spokesman John Babcock has disclosed that “in search of further clarity,” officials with the Canadian High Commission in London are working “to verify the conflicting reports and evidence, and we look forward to a conclusive finding of where Sir John A.’s exact birthplace is.”

The vacant Glasgow building has been described for some time as Macdonald’s birthplace, Babcock added. “The most we can say with confidence is that somebody with a name very similar to Sir John A.’s father may have worked there around the time he was born.”