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Niagara Falls
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Rotary plants red and yellow tulips as part of polio campaign

Simcoe Park will bloom with new red and yellow tulips next summer, thanks to the Niagara-on-the-Lake Rotary Club.

Rotarians, along with their spouses, were out planting the bulbs Friday morning, led by Dylan Muileboom, lead hand for the Town of NOTL's parks department.

The tulips, planted near the park entrance, will produce the same colours used in the club's campaign to eradicate polio, said Jolanta Janny, marketing co-chair for NOTL Rotary.

She said the flowers were planted to commemorate World Polio Day, to bring awareness to the importance of eradicating the life-threatening virus worldwide.

“We are very close in that task. We started about 40 years ago, and it took us so many years, but we are almost polio-free,” Janny said.

According to the Rotary club, so far polio cases have been reduced by 99.9 per cent worldwide.

“There are only two countries in the world that have wild polio virus, and it's Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Janny.

The tulips will be blooming around the end of April or early May and will be a reminder of efforts by Rotarians to make polio a thing of the past.

“We hope that it becomes tradition and we'll be able to do it every year in coordination with the town,” Janny said.

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