The tulip festival has personal meaning for my family: my mother, Dorothy King, was part of the team that delivered Princess Margriet of The Netherlands at the Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1943.

This was a remarkable honour for Dorothy, who hadn’t quite completed her training yet, but she was thrilled to be asked and forever grateful to Dr. John Puddicombe for including her.

Her hometown paper, the North Bay Nugget, reported that she was introduced to the proud father, Prince Bernhard, after the birth. Dorothy recalled that she made up a bed for him, then realized, to her horror, that she had put a regulation rubber sheet on the mattress.

The following year, Dorothy, by then an operating room nurse, met a very young intern, Doug McKercher. As he told the story, she smacked his hand with a clamp during an operation because he was fumbling with sterile instruments on her tray. It was the start of a beautiful romance.

After the war and his specialist training, Doug returned to the Civic and became one of the city’s leading ear, nose and throat doctors. Dorothy quit nursing to raise their four children, but in so many ways — including the fact we were all born there — the Civic was central to all our lives.