History of the Festival
The Canadian Tulip Festival has grown into the largest Tulip Festival in the world from a gift of International Friendship given six decades ago. In the fall of 1945, Princess Juliana of the Netherlands presented Ottawa with 100,000 tulip bulbs. The gift was given in appreciation of the safe haven that members of Holland's exiled royal family received during the Second World War in Ottawa and in recognition of the role which Canadian troops played in the liberation of the Netherlands.
Flickr set of the festival:
When I was a kid, we'd all choose tulips from the neighbour's garden to take the the local flower show, for the kids' tulip judging. I would always choose the most perfect, reddest one...but my choice never won. Little did I know that plain red was the most boring... :-)
ReplyDeleteNow the deer eat the tulips that come up every spring in my yard...
I don't think red tulips are boring. I was sitting in the garden yesterday and the light hit the red tulips in a way that made them look as if they were lit from the inside like little lamps.
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