Canadian Tulip Festival

About mid-winter each year I start to wonder why I ever decided to move to Ottawa. It's so-o-o-o cold! BUT.. it's such a pretty little city with the Rideau Canal, the Byward Market and Parliament Hill as visual anchors; I just have to take one trip downtown and I'm reminded of at least one reason we choose to stay. The city is quite simply... beautiful. Another reason is all the unique festivals that are held here that attract visitors from all over the world. Each May Ottawa hosts the Canadian Tulip Festival, the largest of it's kind in the world. For people not familiar with the story behind the festival (here comes today's history lesson folks!) it developed from a gesture of appreciation by the Dutch royal family in the 1940's when the Canadian government hosted Princess Juliana of the Netherlands during the Natzi occupation of that country. When the family returned home they sent 100,000 tulip bulbs as a way of saying thank you. Since then, thousands of bulbs were received annually from the Netherlands. The NCC has planted hundreds of thousand more. In 1953, Ottawa photographer Malak Karsh and the Ottawa Board of Trade began the inaugural Canadian Tulip Festival and it's been going on ever since.

The Tulip Festival attracts flower lovers galore, not to mention professional photographers, enthusiasts and shutter bugs. I've been taking pictures here for 30 years and I never get tired of it. One day, I'm going to find some of the first pictures I took in the early 80's with G.C. Until then, I'll post a few from the past two weeks though I have many, many....many more.

For information on the Canadian Tulip Festival http://www.ottawa-information-guide.com/ottawa-tulip-festival.html