Canada – Slow Lane Musings

Ottawa in bloom

Every year, the citizens of Ottawa have a good reason to eagerly anticipate the arrival of spring. Soon after the last of the snow has melted, all the streets and parks are cleaned and groomed in preparation for the Tulip Festival in May.

The festival is one of the most popular public events in the country attracting visitors from far and wide. Gardeners responsible for public parks in the national capital region and many homeowners join efforts to plant flower beds containing a large variety of colourful tulips. The tulip is the city’s official flower and the Tulip Festival has been an annual feature since 1953.

This is a time of the year when we really appreciate living in Ottawa. With a population of about one million inhabitants, the city has human proportions, and it never stops to enchant, plus it is beautiful and welcoming.

The festival was the brainchild of a well-known Ottawa-based photographer, Malak Karsh, who immortalized in pictures many of the sites around the capital, including the first Dutch tulips to bloom in the city in 1946. The city’s association with tulips has an interesting background.

Mission improbable

Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was a short-lived attempt to establish a first French mission-settlement in Wendake (“a land apart”), the ancestral land of the Huron-Wendat People, in what is now Ontario. From 1639 to 1649, Sainte-Marie was a thriving French community. When the mission failed after a decade, it was abandoned and burnt to the ground.

The site remained forgotten for two centuries. In 1920, the Government of Canada recognized it as a National Historic Site and the buildings were reconstructed in 1964. Today, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons tells its fascinating story to all who take the time to visit it in Midland, a two-hour drive north of Toronto, on the shores of Georgian Bay.

Remembrance

The grim first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine brought us to reflect on the devastation and human cost of war. We are neither military history buffs nor World War 1 enthusiasts. More like the opposite: we don’t even watch war movies. Nevertheless, we visited northern France in 2003 because we thought it was important to see the Vimy Memorial to help us understand the significance of the Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge.