Canadian Tulip Festival
The Canadian Tulip Festival claims to be the world's
largest tulip festival, with attendance of over 500,000 visitors
annually. This major cultural event is held annually in Ottawa and
Gatineau, Canada, generally on three weekends in May, concluding
with the Victoria Day long weekend.
Although tulips are displayed throughout the city, the most
extensive tulip beds are to found in Commissioners Park on the
shores of Dow's Lake, on the Rideau Canal with 300,000 tulips
planted there alone. (source NCC brochure).
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History
In 1945, the Dutch royal family sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to
Ottawa in gratitude for Canadians having sheltered Princess Juliana
and her daughters for the preceding three years during the Nazi
occupation of the Netherlands, in the Second World War.
The most noteworthy event during their time in Canada was the
birth in 1943 of Princess Margriet to Princess Juliana at the Ottawa
Civic Hospital. The maternity ward was declared to be officially a
temporary part of the Netherlands, so that the birth could formally
be claimed to have occurred on Dutch territory. In 1946, Juliana
sent another 20,500 bulbs requesting that a display be created for
the hospital, and promised to send 10,000 more bulbs each year.
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| In 2007, the festival was reorganised under new leadership.
The festival was redesigned to focus on promoting international
friendship, the original symbolic role of the gift of tulips. Park
admission charges were eliminated and a new feature called Celebridée:
a Celebration of Ideas was introduced. Another component of the
2007 festival was a fund-raising effort in support of War Child
Canada.
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