After being sheltered in Ottawa during the Second World War while their country was under the heel of the Nazis, the Dutch royal family demonstrated their appreciation by presenting Canada’s capital city with a gift of tulips. Ian Fleming, the English writer who created James Bond, called Ottawa a grey city. He can’t have visited during tulip time. Every May Ottawa comes alive with – no exaggeration – millions of bulbs. Indeed, gardens everywhere from coast to coast are aglow with brilliantly coloured tulips. And almost every one of the bulbs that produced them came from the Netherlands.
