Embassy of the United States Ottawa, Canada

One of the photos from our Tulip Festival photo exhibit.

To celebrate the start of this year's Canadian Tulip Festival, the Embassy, in conjunction with the Byward Market Business Improvement Area, is hosting a photo exhibit of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.The Canadian Tulip Festival started sixty years ago, a gift from the Netherlands as a way of thanking the Canadian people for providing safe harbor to the Dutch Royal Family during World War II. It has since grown into an annual rite of spring that brings over 500,000 visitors and 1 million tulips to the National Capital Region.

Similarly, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is an annual event that that features millions of colorful tulips, and also celebrates Dutch heritage. Tulips in the Skagit Valley are from the Roozen family, who first began growing bulbs in Holland in the mid-1700s. The Festival began in 1984, and it now annually welcomes over one million visitors from all 50 states and 51 countries. In 1999, it twinned with Ottawa, officially marking Canada and the United States as "Tulip Friendship Countries" and uniting the two countries in celebrating tulips and Spring.

The photo exhibit will be displayed along the Embassy's Sussex Drive side. Pictures from the exhibit can also be seen in our online gallery. More information on the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival can be found on their website.