Canada still gets Dutch tulips every spring because of Queen Beatrix's wartime childhood
Before she was Queen of the Netherlands, Beatrix was Trixie Orange, a refugee pupil at an Ottawa primary school while Germany occupied her homeland. She later reigned for 33 years, and in 2013 stepped down at 75, the oldest monarch the country had ever had on its throne.
Beatrix was born at Soestdijk Palace in 1938, the first child of Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard. When war reached the Netherlands in May 1940, the royal family fled to London, and a month later Juliana took her daughters on to Ottawa. They lived at Stornoway and spent summers at Bigwin Inn in Ontario, where the Dutch constitution sat in the hotel safe. A third sister, Margriet, was born in Ottawa in 1943. In thanks for that shelter, Juliana began sending tulips to the Canadian government each spring, and they became the heart of the Canadian Tulip Festival.
The throne was not assured for her. Dutch law then put eldest sons ahead of daughters, so only once Juliana could have no further children, and no son, was Beatrix certain to inherit; the constitution adopted equal primogeniture only in 1983. She became heiress presumptive at ten, when her mother succeeded Wilhelmina in 1948, and took a law degree at Leiden in 1961.
Her 1966 wedding in Amsterdam to Claus von Amsberg, a German diplomat who had been in the Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht, drew furious crowds. Some chanted for him to leave; others demanded their bicycles back, a jab at wartime confiscations by German troops. Provos hurled a smoke bomb at the Golden Coach and fought police. Over time, Claus became one of the best-loved royals in the country.
Juliana abdicated on 30 April 1980, and Beatrix became the 13th of the House of Orange to reign. Her powers were ceremonial: signing laws, weekly meetings with the prime minister, the September Speech from the Throne. Journalists were barred from quoting her directly, a rule meant to shield her from political fallout. During her reign Aruba became a separate constituent country in 1986, and the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved in 2010. Her son Willem-Alexander succeeded her, the first king since William III died in 1890.
Source: Beatrix of the Netherlands
