About 100,000 of the special liberation bulbs are being planted by the National Capital Commission (NCC) in Ottawa, where they will bloom into large, bright orange tulips in time for the commemoration of Holland’s liberation on May 5, 2020 — and the Canadian Tulip Festival, one of Ottawa’s top attractions.
The festival itself was inspired by 100,000 tulip bulbs the Dutch royal family gifted to Canada in 1945 for harbouring them in Ottawa during the war, and the 20,000 bulbs that Holland and its royal family kept sending Canada every year after that.
“It’s wonderful to see that now, 75 years later, this tradition still continues in Ottawa,” said Henk van der Zwan, the Netherlands’ ambassador to Canada.
