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Was 1916 fire at Canadian Parliament set by German saboteur?

An American historian thinks it's possible that German agents touched off the fire which destroyed the Centre Block of Parliament in 1916, in the middle of the First World War.

Heribert von Feilitzsch has spent countless hours piecing together the covert activities of German agents working in the United States during the war -- including plots against Canada.

The historian and businessman hit a gold mine when he found 68 boxes of old financial files at the U.S. National Archives, records of people the Germans paid to carry out sabotage missions around North America.

Was Canada's Parliament one of those targets? The 100th anniversary of the devastating fire was marked Wednesday in the House of Commons, with the reading of the names of the seven people who died in the blaze.

Von Feilitzsch hasn't come up with a definitive answer as to whether German saboteurs were responsible. But he points out that two other major plots on Canada were planned and the descriptions of the fire itself still hold valuable clues.

Read entire article at CTV News