Jerry Dewit has been planting tulips in Prince George public places since 1994.
The colourful and symbolic gesture began shortly after the Second World War when Holland sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa as way of thanking Canadians for providing a safe haven during the war for the Dutch royal family, while Canadian soldiers fought on Dutch soil to liberate the country from German occupation.
That flowery tradition continues every year, nationally and locally, and the brilliant results were in full bloom Saturday at the annual Dutch Canadian Tulip Commemoration at Veterans Plaza in front of City Hall.
Dewit spoke of the narrow escape of his mother and seven other family members when German soldiers, acting on a tip, searched their home in Zwolle, Holland. Fighting back tears, Dewit told how the Nazis tore back a carpet during their raid but stopped just short of revealing a trap door to a basement compartment that hid a member of the Allied air force.
"They didn't find anything and marched out of the house," said Dewit. "Nineteen of my family members are alive today because of that. If they had found that flier, they would have been branded part of the Dutch underground and would have either been shot, or sent to a concentration camp or forced labour camp."
Ninety-one year old Teddy van Stolk was 25 when the Canadians liberated Holland on May 5, 1945. At the time, she was living with her family on a farm in rural Holland near the town of Friesland, having moved there to escape two tense years of bombing while living in Rotterdam. Tulips became food for Dutch people during the "hunger winter" of 1944-45. People in the cities were starving and were forced to eat dogs and cats to survive. On the farm, they grew a large garden and had a plentiful supply of vegetables. Hunger was never an issue for the family of five, but wood and fuel were in short supply. To cook their food they used a "Russian stove" made of an empty tomato juice can, burning small pieces of wood and some coal they had stolen from the railway station.
The hunger winter ended April 28, 1945, when the Canadians negotiated a truce to allow food supplies to be delivered. Dutch citizens wrote "Thank you Canadians" on rooftops to show their appreciation.
Van Stolk's family was tied to the Dutch resistance and they usually knew when the Germans were coming to conduct their searches. One room of their house had a linen closet that could be pushed back on skate blades to reveal a hidden compartment used to hide her two brothers and keep them from being forced to join the German army. To prevent their bicycles from being confiscated, they threw them into a water-filled ditch whenever the Nazi soldiers were approaching.
Most families in the area had crystal radios which gave updates on the war, and that's how they learned the Germans had surrendered. The rumble of the Allies' military vehicles coming through Friesland brought everybody in the area to the town on a day van Stolk will never forget.
"The neighbours told us the Germans had gone and the war was over -- it was a happy time and a great relief, because five years is a long time," said van Stolk, who moved from Holland to Prince George with her husband in 1953.
"We were overjoyed and as young girls we adored the soldiers liberating us and we started to climb on the tanks, then we went to the dances afterward."
Eight months of fighting took a heavy toll on Canadian troops, leaving 1,481 soldiers dead and 6,289 injured. The remaining 117,000 German soldiers in Holland surrendered to Canadian Lt.-Gen, Charles Foulkes on May 5, which is now a Dutch national holiday. On that day every year, schoolchildren continue the tradition of placing tulip flowers on all the graves of the Canadian soldiers.
