Why it's not a Canadian province

Mike Coppock, a freelance writer from Enid, Oklahoma who teaches in Tuluksak, Alaska, has an article in History.com about Alaska:

The reason Alaska is not part of Canada has much to do with the Battle of Sitka (photo).
On the morning of 30 September 1804, an Eskimo chief, Katlian stood on a promontory that would become Sitka and stared out over a harbor choked with hundreds of Aleut baidarkas (Russian for kayak) and a small Russian warship, the Neva. Two years earlier, Katlian and his Tlingit warriors had massacred the 150 inhabitants of Redoubt St. Michael, founded by Russia-American Company governor Alexander Baranov, just six miles to the east. Baranov had purchased the land from the Sitka Tlingits in good faith. Now Baranov was back, having led this fleet of kayaks and the Russian warship across more than a thousand miles of open water to take back southeast Alaska.
The Tlingit warriors were armed with rifles and two cannons supplied by Hudson Bay Company traders who wanted the Russians removed. Katlian had already built a fall-back fortification a few miles to the south along Indian River. After Baranov charged the rock outcropping with a handful of Russian soldiers and allied Aleut warriors, the Tlingits retreated to their Indian River fortification. Baranov, wounded in the battle, had the fort bombarded by the Neva before ordering an assault by Russians and Aleuts. But Katlian had outflanked him by sending a force downriver, coming up behind the Russians and breaking up the attack.
For five days, Baranov kept the Tlingit fort under siege; meanwhile, British traders sent guns and ammunition to the besieged Tlingits. Unexpectedly, a British canoe carrying much-needed powder exploded. On the sixth day, the Russians discovered the Tlingits had left the fort, having covered the retreat of their families to the opposite side of the island and across a narrow straight to Chichagof Island.
The Battle of Sitka was over, and the Hudson Bay Company's attempt to rid Alaska of Russians was a failure. Baranov would strengthen Russia's claim to Alaska with additional settlements, even setting up a colony in Northern California and building forts in Hawaii. The Tlingits were banned from Baranof Island for as long as Baranov ruled Alaska.
Baranov moved Alaska’s capital from Kodiak to Sitka in 1808, in order to keep an eye on British activity in the Pacific Northwest, and the city would remain the capital until 1906. Baranov and subsequent Russian governors slowly transformed Sitka into the “Pearl of the Pacific”. Baranov built the first government offices on the top of the rock outcropping from which Tlingit chiefs had ruled. The building became known as Baranov's Castle and the rock as Castle Hill.
The small capital had icehouses, sawmills, brickyards, flour mills, and a shipyard. The first steamship on North America's west coast was built at Sitka. Baranov oversaw the construction of a lighthouse and a magnetic observatory. By the 1820s, Sitka was hosting gala balls, amateur theater, and serving wine to visiting ship captains. She boasted five schools—some being the first racially integrated schools in the New World—financed and set up out of Baranov's own pocket. Saint Michael’s Cathedral, the first Orthodox cathedral in the New World, which dominates Sitka’s heart, was dedicated in 1848.
Tlingits were allowed back on the island in 1821 after Baranov left, but the move proved to be problematic for the Russians in Sitka. The island soon found itself under an informal siege, as unhappy Tlingits gathered in ever-increasing numbers with their families just outside the capital's stockade. Tlingits attacked the Russian hospital at nearby Goddard Hot Springs in 1852 and, in 1855, Tlingit warriors rushed through the stockade that protected Sitka and would have taken the capital had it not been for point-blank Russian cannon fire. The attack lasted two hours, and the Russian governors soon found they did not have the manpower to drive the Tlingits off the island.
Americans inherited the explosive situation when they came to rule Alaska from Sitka in 1867. The United States never had enough troops in Alaska, with a total of just five hundred soldiers to patrol the entire massive land. When the US Army withdrew these troops in 1877 to be part of the fight against the Nez Perce, the situation seemed dire. In 1879, the British warship Osprey protected Sitka from renewed political advances by Tlingit warriors. Afterwards, the Navy stationed a warship at Sitka for the next twenty years.
In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison had the battle site around Indian River turned into the Sitka National Historical Park. Today sixteen replica Tlingit totems (the originals are housed in the park’s Totem Hall) are on display along its pathways. Visitors can watch Tlingit artists at work carving new totems for various villages and events.
The huge log buildings next to the park were once the campus of Sheldon Jackson College, dating back to 1878 when the Reverend John Brady transformed the former Army barracks into the Sitka Industrial and Training School to advance native education. The college closed in 2007 because of funding shortfalls.
Although Saint Michael's Cathedral burned down in 1966, it was rebuilt with many of the icons from the original edifice that were saved by Sitka residents braving the flames. Tours of the cathedral take place daily. Baranov's Castle burned down in 1894, and Castle Hill is now a park. But the Russian blockhouses and part of the stockade that held back Tlingit warriors remain in place, as does Bishop's House, built in 1842, from which Bishop Innocent Veniaminov guided Orthodox missionaries throughout Alaska.
The impressive white- and red-trimmed Alaska Pioneer Home, built in 1935, has a statue, The Prospector, in front. The model for the statue was William “Skagway Bill” Fonda, who had been part of the vigilante gang out to get famed Skagway outlaw Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith in 1898.
The O'Connell Bridge to Japonski Island, which was named in 1805 when Japanese fishermen shipwrecked on the island (Baranov had the fishermen returned to Japan in 1806), was built in 1971. It was the first vehicle cable bridge in the Western Hemisphere. The island also has many former military installations that were harbor defenses in case of a Japanese attack during World War Two. One military building became the Mount Edgecombe High School for rural Alaskans. Begun as a Bureau of Indian Affairs school in 1946, it became a state school in 1986. Though some aspects of Sitka’s history are faded from memory, the echoes of past encounters reverberate through many of these landmarks and throughout the island.

Rico says it's another place he's not likely to get to, even in the summertime, but it looks interesting...