Fall 2010

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace

As I have seen in one autumnal face.

~ John Donne

Point Pelee National Park

Entrance to the park, one of the 5 Canadian national parks in Ontario.

When you reach this point at Point Pelee, this means you are in the 42nd parallel and in the same latitude as Rome and Barcelona. A few meters from this point and we were standing on the southernmost part of Canada.

The marsh boardwalks seen from the viewing station.

Canadian Tulip Festival

Road Signs to Ottawa

Winter in Collingwood

Collingwood is around 2 hours drive from Toronto and better known for the Blue Mountain Ski Resort. Whether you ski or not - the place is worth a visit during winter.
More photos here.

Ottawa Tulip Festival

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the fourth largest municipality in the country and second largest in Ontario. It is home to several former NSC employees and is a 4 hour drive from Toronto. The place is also accessible by Via Rail, the Greyhound bus, or even by plane.

Aside from those facts however, Ottawa is also known for The Canadian Tulip Festival.

Although Canada's Tulip Festival started in 1953, the story behind the festival started in the fall of 1945, when the people of the Netherlands sent a gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa in gratitude to Canadians having sheltered Princess Juliana and her daughters for the preceding three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, in the Second World War.

Then in 1946, Princess Juliana sent 20,000 bulbs to show her gratitude for the hospitality she received here when she gave birth in 1943 to Princess Margret at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. The maternity ward was declared to be officially a temporary part of international territory, so that she would be born in no country and would inherit only her Dutch citizenship from her mother.

Each year, Ottawa receives 10,000 bulbs from the Queen's household, bringing the number of annual blooms to over one million in the National Capital Commission tulip beds.

The Ottawa Tulip Festival lasts for 18 days in the month of May, and is claimed to be the world's largest tulip festival, with attendance of over 500,000 visitors annually.

Grimsby, Ontario

Former NSC employees are scattered in different cities, towns and municipalities in Ontario. Grimsby is one of these places.

Grimsby - "The gateway to Niagara" is a town of 25,000 located at the western end of Lake Ontario. It is an easy 30 minutes from Niagara Falls and around an hour from Toronto. With a number of wineries and distilleries, Grimsby now serves as the starting point for touring the Niagara wine region.

Kevin Hearn, keyboard and other instruments player for Barenaked Ladies was born in Grimsby. Grimsby is also the birthplace of a now forgotten Hollywood director, Del Lord, director of most of the Three Stooges short vaudeville comedies.

Grimsby is also home to one former NSC family, whom we paid a visit recently.