Canada celebrates 150th birthday with some Panama style chaos

by Howard Williams

CANADA’S  150th anniversary celebrations started this year with Panamanian-style flooding, which ended in time for Ottawa, the nation’s capital,  to celebrate Tulip Fest — an annual celebration of the city’s and nation’s proud links with the Netherlands — and for the capital to clean up as it prepared for the July 1 Canada Day festivities.

But the capital is still plagued with Panamanian-style traffic chaos.

Queen Elizabeth, who has stopped attending overseas events, will be represented at the Canada Day celebrations by her son, Prince Charles, and the Duchess of Cornwall, with Union Jacks flying alongside the Maple Leaf flag a century and a half after Canada was deemed able to govern itself.

Construction delays
Fortunately, their Royal Highnesses will be driven along specially prepared routes with armed escorts while the hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens in town for the celebrations will have to contend with roads blocked off for the belated construction of a light railway commuter network (which should have been ready for this year’s celebrations,  but is now expected to be completed next year) and the bizarre timing of the re-numbering of most of the city’s main bus routes while roads and sidewalks remain blocked for the construction of a bundle of new high-rise buildings (Panama style) in the centre of the city.

The city’s unusually harsh winter led to a record number of potholes and the construction of the underground section of the light rail system resulted on the shut off of access to several downtown buildings within a stone’s throw of the parliament building for several days. This was followed by a worker helping construct the light rail system breaking a gas main, forcing the closure of several downtown office buildings.

And all this coincided with the city’s transit system re-numbering major bus routes (many of them as late as just five days before the July 1 celebrations leaving locals nearly as confused as visitors).

Why all these delays? Well, construction of the light railway system was first first delayed over budgetary problems and then cancelled by the city council which had to pay a hefty cancellation fee to the consortium hired to do the job, and then pay another deposit when the council changed its mind and gave the go-ahead again for the multi-billion dollar project, but too late to be completed for the nation’s 150th birthday.

One thing missing — because of the seasons — from the July 1 celebrations will be flowerbeds full of Maple Leaf tulips, white bulbs with what looks remarkably like a red Maple Leaf which adorned official grounds and residences in May.

Happily, the tulips lasted long enough for a state visit to Canada in May of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands whose grandmother, the late Queen Juliana, donated 100,000 tulip bulbs to Canada in thanks for Canada giving her sanctuary during World War II. During her stay in Ottawa, the Canadian government decreed that the rooms used by the then Princess Juliana be ceded to the Netherlands while she gae birth to her third daughter, Princess Margriet, to enable the newborn child to be in the line of succession for the Dutch throne.

Juliana then made another annual gift of 20,500 bulbs in recognition of Canada`s pivotal role in liberating the Netherlands from Nazi occupation.

The Maple Leaf tulips were developed by Dutch horticulturists to be ready for Canada`s 150th birthday. But they were about the only thing that has run on time for the big event.

In addition to the inevitable security surrounding any major celebrations in this era of terrorism, visitors and locals alike will have to contend with traffic chaos from a record amount of downtown construction works as well as the light rail transit system and re-numbered bus routes . At least Panamanians should feel at home.

Howard Williams is a former parliamentary correspondent who still keeps an eye on life in the capital for Newsroom