On this date in 1841 the United Province of Canada was created by the Act of Union, which lasted until the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

Frye on the “anarchist tradition” in Canada in a 1969 interview, “CRTC Guru”:

Frye: There are other things in the Canadian tradition that are worth thinking about.  Thirty years ago [in the 1930s] the great radical movement was international Communism, which took no hold in Canada at all.  There were Marxist poets, there were no Marxist painters… The radical movement of our time is anarchist and that means that it’s local and separate and breaks down into small units.  That’s our tradition and that’s our genius.  Think of Toronto and Montreal (I know Toronto better than Montreal, but I think the same is true of both cities): after the Second World War, we took in displaced persons from Europe to something like one-quarter to one-fifth of the population.  In Toronto in 1949, one out of every five people had been there less than a year.  We have not had race riots,we have not had ethnic riots, we have not had the tremendous pressures and collisions that they’ve had in American cities.  Because Canada is naturally anarchist, these people settle down into their own communities; they work with other communities and the whole pattern of life fits it.  I do think we have to keep a very wide open and sympathetic eye towards radical movements in Canada, because they will be of the anarchist kind and they will be of a kind of energy that we could help liberate.  (CW 24, 92)