Beauty Of Tulips

In Canada this is the time for Tulip festival and every year the Tulip festival is organized in Ottawa and thousands of people visit the place. Although the pics above taken by me are not from Ottawa but from the tulip gardens of Montreal, I would like to share some information about the history of tulip festival in Canada.

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, over the course of 18 days in May, concluding with the Victoria Day long weekend.

Although tulips are displayed throughout the city, the most extensive tulip beds are found in Commissioners Park on the shores of Dow's Lake, and along the Rideau Canal with 300,000 tulips planted there alone.

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 international territory, so that she would be born in no country and would inherit only her Dutch citizenship from her mother. 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.In the years following Queen Juliana's original donation, Ottawa became famous for its tulips.