The Canadian Tulip Festival (Every May), Commissioners Park, Dow's Lake & Little Italy

For eleven days every May (leading up to the Victoria Day long weekend), over one million tulips across more than 100 varieties burst into bloom along the parks and boulevards of Ottawa during the Canadian Tulip Festival, the largest tulip festival in the world and a completely free celebration born from one of the most remarkable stories of World War II.

1. Why Did Canada Temporarily Declare an Ottawa Hospital Room 'International Territory' in 1943?

When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Dutch Princess Juliana (later Queen Juliana) evacuated across the Atlantic with her two young daughters to live in exile in Ottawa (at Stornoway in Rockcliffe Park). In January 1943, Princess Juliana was ready to give birth to her third child at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Under Dutch royal succession law, however, a royal heir had to be born on Dutch (not foreign British or Canadian) soil to retain full claim to the throne. The Government of Canada therefore passed a special proclamation temporarily declaring Princess Juliana's maternity ward suite at the Ottawa Civic Hospital to be 'extraterritorial' (outside Canadian jurisdiction) so that Princess Margriet was born solely a Dutch citizen. After Canadian troops led the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944 and 1945, Princess Juliana sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa in autumn 1945, and the Dutch continue sending 20,000 bulbs every year.

2. Where to See the Best Tulips & Explore Dow's Lake, The Arboretum & Little Italy

• Commissioners Park on Dow's Lake (Preston St & Queen Elizabeth Driveway, O-Train Line 2 Dow's Lake Station): the centrepiece of the festival. Over 300,000 tulips across 30 manicured flower beds curve along a 1-kilometre waterfront promenade beside Dow's Lake, complete with a nightly 'Tulip Legacy' sound-and-light boardwalk show and food trucks.
• The Dominion Arboretum (Across the Canal Locks at Hartwells, Free Daily): founded in 1889 as Canada's oldest arboretum inside the Central Experimental Farm, its rolling hills of magnolias, flowering crabapples and weeping willows overlooking Dow's Lake are the top picnic spot in Ottawa.
• Preston Street ('Little Italy', 2 Minutes' Walk North of Dow's Lake): step right off the tulip beds onto Preston Street for wood-fired pizza, homemade gelato (at Pasticceria Gelateria Italiana since 1979) and cannoli at DiRienzo's.