The Story Behind the Canadian Tulip Festival

Stop and take a selfie with the tulips. The Canadian Tulip Festival, the largest event of its kind, returns this spring. This year, it celebrates its 70th anniversary at Ottawa's Commissioners Park from May 13-23, 2022. 

For 11 days, there will be dazzling multicolour blooms along picturesque Dows Lake for selfie moments – just stay out of the flower beds. And don’t forget movies in the park, a one-kilometre blacklight boardwalk, and a firework show on Sunday May 22 at 10 p.m. 

But did you know the event has ties to Europe? During the Second World War, The Royal Family of the Kingdom of the Netherlands took refuge in Ottawa, and Princess Margriet was born at the Civic Hospital in 1943. She is the only royal born in Canada, but then-Governor-General, the Earl of Althone, decreed that the Ottawa Civic Hospital maternity ward rooms were extraterritorial for the birth, ensuring the baby would only have Dutch citizenship. (Sidenote: The Royal baby didn’t see her homeland until August 1945.)   

Every year after the war, the Dutch Royal Family and the people of the Netherlands send tulip bulbs as a symbol of international friendship.  

The gifted plants led to the start of the Canadian Tulip Festival, which celebrates Canadian troops aiding in liberating the Netherlands and the birth of Princess Margriet.