It’s Tulip Festival time!

I’m not much of a Winterlude girl, but I do love Ottawa’s Tulip Festival. (How can I not love a festival that’s mere steps outside my office door, jam-packed with gorgeous subjects for my 365 project?)

There’s some cool stuff going on in the Tulip Festival this year, too — truly a little something for everyone. You’re too late for Margaret Atwood (one of my heroes) or Rick Mercer (my old nemesis from year one of the Canadian blog awards), but there are plenty of other intriguing presentations as part of the Celebridée speakers’ series. You can also see an acrobatic troupe or even try out the trapeeze yourself. Or, you can do what I’ve been doing and just wander around and enjoy the vibrant colours that the tulips splash throughout our winter-dulled city.

I love playing tour-guide when we have visitors, and I always tell the story of why Ottawa has a tulip festival in the first place. During World War II, the Dutch royal family stayed in Ottawa, and Queen Julianna’s daughter Princess Margriet was born in Ottawa’s Civic Hospital. For her birth, the maternity ward of the Civic (where Tristan and Simon were both born) was declared “Dutch soil”. After the war, the Dutch people sent 100,000 tulips to the city as a thank you, and now more than half a million tulips bloom here each year.

This is my favourite tulip festival picture so far. (Hey, we still have more than 10 days to go!) I’m riding on the vintage ferris wheel, circa 1917, and used the bars to frame the National Gallery of Canada. A little something different from your everyday tourist shot of the Gallery! (Just don’t tell my mom that I practically fell out of the chair trying to get a low enough perspective that I didn’t cut off the top of the Gallery. Shhhh!)

The Canadian (I like to think of it as the Ottawa) Tulip Festival runs through May 18, and there are some reasonably-priced and even free events for a wide range of audiences. It’s worth the effort to come downtown for this one!

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