The Canadian Tulip Festival has grown to become the largest Tulip Festival in the world. It was established to preserve the heritage of Canada’s role in liberating the Dutch during World War II. The symbolic tulip was a gift in perpetuity to the Canadian people for providing safe harbour to the Dutch Royal Family at that time. The tulips have become an important symbol of friendship and spring, with special meaning to the people of Canada and its Capital Region.The Festival’s mandate is to preserve this heritage and celebrate the tulip as a symbol of friendship by engaging local organizers, volunteers, artists, performers, tourists and festival-goers in what has become an annual ritual of spring and one of Canada’s best loved and well-known cultural events.
