Communist parties in North and Central American and the Caribbean islands have generally been smaller than their European, Asian, and African counterparts. The major exception to this, and the only one to have formed a stable government, is found in Cuba.
Canada has three communist parties. The first and oldest is the Communist Party of Canada. Its origins can be traced back to the 1890 founding of a Canadian branch of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) of the United States, an 1899 founding of the Canadian Socialist League made up of those who were dissatisfied with the autocratic style of SLP leader Daniel De Leon (1852-1914), and the 1911 founding of another left-wing party, the Social Democratic Party of Canada. 1 The Canadian democratic socialists would eventually go on to form the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the modern New Democratic Party (NDP). 2
In 1920 the Canadian Marxist-Leninists were organizing their own communist groups. They were branches of the Communist Party of America and the United Communist Party of America. They united in May 1921 to form the Communist Party of Canada (CPC), with a founding convention in Guelph, Ontario. 3 They were young British or Anglicized intellectuals and skilled workers. They recruited successfully among left-wing immigrants, especially from Finland and the Ukraine. Among its
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