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The Exiled Princess of Ottawa: Canadiana Series, Season 1
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Subject(s): Canadian History, Canadian Social Studies, Canadian World Studies, History, Social Studies
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12, Post Secondary
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12, Post Secondary
Every May, people visit Ottawa during the annual tulip festival to admire the blooms from the bulbs donated each fall by the Netherlands. The gift is an annual thank you to Canada for providing a haven in Ottawa for the Dutch royal family exiled when the Nazis invaded and occupied their neutral country during World War II. Queen Juliana’s third child, Princess Margriet Francisca was born in Ottawa in 1943. The Canadian army helped to liberate the Netherlands in 1944 and air-dropped food to its starving, grateful citizens. The tulip is now the official flower of Ottawa, and the two countries have a friendship that has endured.
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Running Time: 5:30 Country of Origin: Canada Captions:  |
Producer: The Canadiana Project Inc. Copyright Date: 2017 Language: English |
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The Exiled Princess of Ottawa: Canadiana Series, Season 1 5:30
Every May, people visit Ottawa during the annual tulip festival...
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- This is Commissioners Park in Ottawa. Every May, half a million people gather to watch the city bloom. The annual tulip festival is the biggest in the world. The event has become so synonymous with Ottawa that its origins have gotten a little lost. Even if you know that 10,000 of these tulips are an annual gift from the Netherlands, you might not know why. The answer involves royalty, rights of succession, and the liberation of a nation, a story that takes us back more than 75 years to a much darker May. This is Canadiana.
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- May 1940, the Nazis are tearing through the Netherlands. As the invaders draw near, the Dutch royal family makes a narrow escape, fleeing to London to establish a government in exile. But London isn't exactly safe, either. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Over the next few months, German bombs kill tens of thousands of British civilians. Queen Wilhemina fears for her children and her grandchildren, so they're evacuated all the way across the ocean.
- Crown Princess Juliana and her two daughters, Beatrix and Irene, settle in Ottawa, here in Rockcliffe Park, to await the fate of their homeland. The war rages for three more dark years, with no end in sight. But there is one glimmer of hope from the exiled family. Princess Juliana is pregnant. There's another princess on the way.
- The news is a great boost for Dutch morale, but politically, it's a thorny issue. Suddenly, archaic rules about bloodlines and right of succession are serious issues in Ottawa. Canada has to be sure that Juliana's child is born 100% legally and solely Dutch. So as the due date approached, they prepared four rooms here at Ottawa Civic Hospital. It's a common misconception that the maternity ward was declared Dutch territory for the birth, but that's a myth. The truth is, it didn't need to be.
- Canada practices jus soli, birthright citizenship. If you're born on Canadian soil, you are a Canadian. But the Dutch, on the other hand, only practice jus sanguinis, right of blood. If you're born to Dutch parents, it doesn't matter where you're born. You're Dutch. So Juliana's daughter would automatically be born Dutch, though there still was one problem. They needed to make sure she wasn't also accidentally born Canadian.
- And so the maternity ward didn't become Dutch territory. It became denationalized. While Juliana was giving birth, no nation had claim to the ward. It was like a little puddle of international waters. On a freezing cold January afternoon, just a few blocks from Holland Avenue, Juliana gave birth to a baby girl. She was named after a flower, a symbol of Dutch resistance against the Nazis, little baby Margriet. That day, for the first and only time, a foreign flag flew from the Peace Tower.
- And the Canadians weren't done yet. Two years later, in 1945, the First Canadian Army swept into the Netherlands. The Royal Air Force launched Operation Manna, airdropping food to the starving population. The grateful people below spelled out thank-you messages using the national flower of the Netherlands, tulips. The First Canadian Army would go on to liberate the Netherlands. On a very sunny May the 5th, the occupying forces officially surrendered. Juliana, Beatrix, Irene, and little Margriet were going home.
- Later that same year, despite suffering horrible post-war scarcity, the Netherlands sent Canada a gift, 100,000 tulips. And the next year, they sent another 10,000, and then again and again and again every year since. In 2001, the tulip was declared the official flower of Ottawa, further strengthening the bond. And now, every May, the city blooms in bright tribute to those dark days of the Second World War when Canada sheltered a princess and freed a nation.
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