Justin Bieber Is a Distant Cousin of Ryan Gosling and Céline Dion

By Tim Nudd

10/11/2012 at 08:30 AM EDT

Well, this would be quite the star-studded family reunion!

Justin Bieber is a distant cousin of Ryan Gosling, Céline Dion and Avril Lavigne, genealogists at Ancestry.com said Thursday – with their family links dating back to the early settlers of Canada's Quebec province.

Bieber and Gosling are 11th cousins once removed; he and and Dion are 10th cousins three times removed; and he and Lavigne are 12th cousins.

"The great thing about family history is that you never know what you're going to find," Michelle Ercanback, a researcher with Ancentry.com, told the Associated Press. "It was a very pleasant surprise."

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All the connections date back to two French couples who moved to Quebec in the 1600s. Bieber, Gosling and Lavigne count Mathurin Roy and Marguerite Bire as common ancestors; Bieber and Dion are connected through another couple, Jacques Vezina and Marie Boisdon.

In more modern-day Bieber news, the singer, 18, was the victim of a "swatting" prank Tuesday night, TMZ.com reports, as a SWAT team descended on his home to investigate anonymous – and ultimately false – reports by a 911 caller of a gunman on the loose there.

The pop star also appears in a lengthy new anti-bullying PSA, in which he talks with a Long Island student about the topic.

The PSA was mandated by a court as part of a plea deal in a criminal case against Bieber's manager, Scooter Braun, and one other executive stemming from a crowd-control problem at a Long Island mall in 2009.

Braun and James Roppo were accused of failing to cooperate with police and hindering police efforts to disperse a crowd at a scheduled Bieber appearance.

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