By Greg Scott May 5, 2025
The Dutch Ordeal, the Canadian Deliverance, and a Bond That Endures
The Netherlands in the spring of 1945 was not merely a country at war—it was a country brought to the brink of starvation, humiliation, and extinction. Under five years of Nazi occupation, the Dutch people endured a ruthless regime of repression, deportations, and famine. Their railways dismantled, cities bombed, and freedoms shredded, the Dutch watched helplessly as neighbours were dragged from homes and Jewish citizens vanished into the night. Resistance was met with brutality. Hunger replaced hope. By the winter of 1944–45—the infamous Hongerwinter—tens of thousands had died from malnutrition. Bread was scarce, tulip bulbs became meals.
Then, out of the mud and misery, came the Canadians.
On May 5, 1945, Canadian forces, after months of grinding battle across the Scheldt, North Brabant, and the Gelderland regions, accepted the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands. The date is etched not only in history, but in the hearts of generations of Dutch citizens. Liberation came not as a triumphant fanfare, but as a long-awaited exhalation—life breathed back into a nation suffocating under the boot of tyranny.
Historian Tim Cook, chronicler of Canada’s wartime experience, observed, “For the Dutch, the Canadians were not just liberators—they were lifelines. Soldiers who brought not only rifles but bread, milk, and medicine. Who fought not for conquest, but for humanity.”
(Cook & Braaten, 2021, Canadian Military History, vol. 30, issue 1.)
The Canadian 1st Army, under General Harry Crerar and later General Charles Foulkes, was given a task monumental in scale and human weight: drive out entrenched Nazi forces from a maze of canals, flooded farmland, and booby-trapped dikes, while sparing civilian lives and infrastructure as best they could. It was, as General Guy Simonds called it, “a battle fought with one arm tied behind our back—and with our hearts exposed.”
The Dutch ordeal was unparalleled in Western Europe. Some 107,000 Dutch Jews—more than 75% of the country’s Jewish population—were deported and murdered. Economic devastation was total. Children died in their mothers’ arms; civilians biked for days across provinces in search of potatoes. Against this backdrop, the maple leaf on a soldier’s shoulder was not a symbol—it was salvation.
In the decades since, the Dutch have never forgotten.
Where other liberated countries gradually moved on, the Netherlands wove its gratitude into the fabric of its identity. Each May, the nation erupts in orange and red—flags, tulips, and tears. In cities like Apeldoorn, Wageningen, and Holten, schoolchildren sing Wilhelmus and O Canada with equal conviction. Liberation Day is not a formality; it is reverence.
Veterans were not left to fade into memory. They were invited back—again and again—welcomed as family. Streets were named for them. Children adopted their graves. The Dutch did not just say thank you; they taught their children to say it too.
In 2025, at the 80th anniversary of the Liberation, over 40 Canadian veterans, now in their late 90s and beyond, made the journey across the Atlantic once more. Some came in wheelchairs, some supported by their children and grandchildren—but they came. For many, it is a pilgrimage. In Apeldoorn, throngs lined the streets. One elderly Dutch woman, holding the hand of her great-grandson, said simply: “They saved us. We remember.”
Canadian veteran George MacDonell, now 101, told students at a ceremony near Groningen: “We weren’t heroes. We were boys doing what had to be done. But what we saw here—the hunger, the fear, the gratitude—I’ve carried it with me every day since.”
Historian Terry Copp, a noted scholar of Canadian military campaigns, emphasized the uniqueness of the Dutch-Canadian bond: “There is a sacred reciprocity in that relationship. The Dutch keep the memory alive, and in doing so, they’ve kept our veterans alive in return.”
The Royal Canadian Legion, Veterans Affairs Canada, and Dutch municipalities have worked closely for decades to sustain this transatlantic kinship. Tulip bulbs—gifts from the Dutch Royal Family—still arrive in Ottawa, planted each spring in remembrance. Dutch schools assign Canadian grave adoptions as part of their civic education. Thousands of Dutch youth know the names of Canadians who died long before their grandparents were born.
This mutual devotion isn’t nostalgia—it is a living legacy.
William Manchester, chronicler of human struggle in war, once wrote that “the measure of a man is not in the war he fights, but in the peace he leaves behind.” By that measure, the Canadians in the Netherlands left behind more than peace. They left behind a partnership, a pledge—a covenant of remembrance.
As Canadians, we owe them not just memorials, but mindfulness. Their legacy demands more than poppies pinned once a year. It calls us to recognize that the true cost of freedom is not measured in dollars or medals, but in the dignity restored to a people, the bridges rebuilt between nations, and the enduring warmth that still greets the Canadian flag in towns we once bled to save.
And as long as tulips bloom in spring—whether in Ottawa or in the soft earth of the Veluwe—the story of liberation will continue to grow.
References:
Copp, T. (2021). Lecture Series: The Liberation of Holland, Wilfrid Laurier University, Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies.anada’s Triumph in the Netherlands, 1945
Cook, T., & Braaten, B. (2021). The Stories Behind “Forever Changed”. Canadian Military History, 30(1). Read Full Text
Littlewood, T. (2024). Public Commemorations and Personal Memories: Canadian Commemoration of the Second World War. University of Guelph. University Repository
Luther, M.J. (2023). A Story of Resilience and Survival: Canadian Soldier Harold Luther’s Letters Home During the Second World War. University of Calgary. PRISM Archive
Chassé, M. (2019). War Brides and Postwar Lives in Northwestern Ontario. Memorial University of Newfoundland. MUN Archive
Cook, T. (2006). Clio’s Warriors: Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars. UBC Press.
MacDonell, G. (2025). Veteran Speech Transcript, Apeldoorn Commemoration (via Historica Canada Archives).