Yesterday was "Boxing Day" in Canada!! Yes, that special event like America's "Black Friday", that is known as the busiest shopping day of the year and because of all the "olive-coloured" twenty dollar bills that are handed over to cashiers, Canada deservedly is given the moniker
"The Great Green North" for a day. However, due to the combined unpredictable weather conditions sent our way from this year's El Ni
ño and the jet-stream's Pacific instead of Arctic air flows, the
"Great GREEN North" label is probably more justified because this neck of woods has been experiencing hardly any snow and some unbelievably warm temperatures throughout the month December.
While normal Ottawa daytime highs for December usually hover just below freezing, many daytime highs this month reached double digit above freezing temperatures including Christmas Eve Day where the "Coldest Capital in the World" reached a balmy +17
° Celsius (or 58F), which instead of shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts, many duffers were out playing around of golf at area courses simply to to brag that they could. Also, while normally our lawns and gardens would be blanketed with a layer of 5-10cm of snow that often remained there until spring, this year all you see is beautiful green grass, budding lilac bushes, and even our garden's irises and tulips are starting to break through the ground.
Talking about tulips, there was a certain air or confidence about her as the 507' Wagenborg general cargo carrier
BEATRIX cleared the shoreline arbour beneath Windmill Light Point last July and proudly sliced her way through the ocean bound current of the St. Lawrence River with pomp and circumstances. Of course it made perfect sense because this little beauty was named after the former Queen of the Netherlands from 1980-2013 and a women who new Canada well and appreciated all that we did while harbouring the Dutch Royal Family during the Second World War.
When World War II broke out in the Netherlands in 1940, the Dutch Royal family fled to England. Soon after, the infant Princess Beatrix, her sister Irene, and mother, Juliana moved to Ottawa where they resided in Rockcliffe's Stornaway House (current residence to Canada's Leader of the Opposition) until the war ended in 1945. While growing up in Ottawa, Princess Beatrix attended Rockcliffe Public School where she was known as "Trixie Orange". Especially noteworthy during their time in Canada was Princess Margriet's birth at the Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1943 where the maternity ward was officially declared a "temporary international territory" so that baby Margriet would be born in no country and would inherit only her Dutch citizenship from her mother, Princess Juliana.
In gratitude for Canadians having sheltered Princess Juliana and her daughters during the three year Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. the Dutch Royal Family sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa. In 1946, Princess Juliana sent another 20,500 bulbs requesting that a display be created for the hospital, and promised to send 10,000 more bulbs each year. The Dutch Royals kept their promise and now annually over 500,000 people visit Ottawa every May to view Holland's gifts to Canada in full bloom at the Canadian Tulip Festival, which is claimed to be the world's largest. c):-))
Meanwhile, back at the boat blog, along with a prestigious name, the 507'
BEATRIX is uniquely designed to carry a variety of dry cargoes in her holds or up to 475 TEU containers. Though her name was
FIVELBORG when she was launched in 2009 in Leer, Germany, the
BEATRIX flies the flag the Netherlands and her homeport is Delfzijl.
On that day in July, the sleek and slender
BEATRIX swayed like in a warm spring breeze while negotiating the various required turns along the St. Lawrence allowing her to reach her final upbound destination without incident. It's all we can do during this premature early spring but except what we receive until old man winter returns. No rush with that eh! c):-()
