The Exiled Princess of Ottawa

A story about a royal family, a world at war, a baby, and a whole lot of tulips.

Special thanks to the Canadian Tulip Festival and The Ottawa Hospital for permitting us to film on location.

Two crazy Canadians who helped a starving Holland (Farley Mowat story).

Some more incredible footage of the Liberation of the Netherlands (in colour).

Queen Wilhelmina (Juliana's mother) stayed in Britain during the war and basically took control of the Netherlands as the head-of-state. She fought against those in the Dutch parliament who thought the Germans were going to win the war, and she refused to negotiate a peace agreement with the Nazis. She began regularly broadcasting to her people via radio, and became a cherished figure of Dutch resistance during the war. Wilhelmina reigned from 1890 to 1948 (the longest in Dutch history), through two world wars and an economic crisis. She was almost killed by a German bomb while in England—it killed two of her guards.

Juliana reigned from 1948 to 1980 and died in 2004. She requested that with each annual gift of tulips, some be displayed on the Ottawa Civic Hospital grounds.

To be clear, had Margriet not been born on 'extraterritorial' grounds, she would not have been eligible in the line of succession according to Dutch royal tradition. At the time of this video's posting she's 74 years old.

Margriet's father, Juliana's husband, Prince Bernhard was a controversial figure in the Netherlands for a whole hell of a lot of reasons. One being that he was a former member of the SS and of the Nazi Party prior to WWII. He separated himself completely from them and cut off ties to Nazi-leaning family members though, taking charge to fight the Netherlands' aggressors wherever he could. He became a bomber pilot and secretary to Queen Wilhemina. Later in life more drama arose (which includes a bizarre battle with a faith-healer charlatan and bribes with airplane manufacturers). If you're interested, the Wikipedia page is a bit of a read.

French subtitles by: Marika Lapointe

*Correction: In 1946 (the second year of the Netherlands' tulip gift to Canada) it wasn't 10, 000 tulips that were delivered, but 20, 500!