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Readers of the Windmill Herald often expressed amazement about little known facets of the history of the Netherlands, its people and their achievements, and, yes, about their foibles too. There are many aspects of Dutch history that have been obscured for one reason or other. Our online book table GoDutch.com (a catalogue may be a better description), offers a wide ranging selection of interesting volumes:

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As soon the shock caused by the news that The Windmill Herald ™ would cease to publish in June 2012 had been digested, readers, advertisers, suppliers and also staff recommended that the paper say farewell with a special commemorative Farewell Issue. We owe everyone a huge THANK YOU for the suggestion; it was a bittersweet experience for everyone and one worth it in many ways. In this issue, contributors, subscribers, advertisers and The Windmill Herald’s longtime editor and publisher reflect upon the paper’s role in their life and in the community. In addition, the Farewell Issue tiptoes with a snapshot review through Dutch immigrant news published in the years 1969-1987, offers backgrounders on a few very popular features of The Windmill Herald, and includes a number of articles on subjects which were already partially researched but not yet printed:

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DE BILT - With a maximum temperature of 11 degrees Celsius, Sunday June 3 was the Netherlands’ coldest summer’s day since 1975. Meteorological service Meteo Consult reports that it was just as ‘warm’ on Christmas Day.

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KINDERDIJK - The foundation which operates the Kinderdijk windmills, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, faces financial distress and may be fighting bankruptcy. According to Dutch broadcaster NOS, the famous windmills are trying to cope with a budget shortfall of €900,000.

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BELLINGHAM, Washington – If anyone wants to turn an abandoned and overgrown former mill site into a gorgeous commercial garden, they do well to first visit Dick and Jennie Bosch’s Glen Echo Garden to see how it is done. Located in the heart of an evergreen forest, landscaper Dick Bosch incorporated the site’s natural features to give their garden near Bellingham, a bustling city between Seattle and Vancouver, Canada, a very unique touch.

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ROTTERDAM – Dutch freight forwarders are taking steps to avoid congestion at the Rotterdam port, where the new Maasvlakte 2 facility is being developed next to Maasvlakte 1, a large spread built in the 1980s which abuts the Dutch North Sea ...

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AMSTERDAM – The horrific child molester case against Latvian-born Robert Mikelsons (Robert M. in the Dutch media) has lead to the arrest of 33 suspected child molesters worldwide, including 8 in the United States. Dutch police gathered extr...

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EINDHOVEN - More sales did not result in higher profits for the Dutch farmer cooperative-owned, Brabant-based food producer Vion Food Group. The giant meat processor saw its sales increase by seven percent for a total of €9.5 billion in 201...

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GRONINGEN - A joint effort, involving the Frisian Archive depository Tresoar and a research institute at the Groningen University, has resulted in posting the data of 1,8 million ships which passed through the narrow Sound between Denmark a...

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THE HAGUE – Do Dutch archive depositories allow the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, microfilm or copy Dutch records, knowing they could be used as a source of information for the Mormon ritu...

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LANGLEY, BC - Red ink is hastening the demise of Dutch community newspaper The Windmill Herald, news which still reverberates throughout Canada and the United States as readers react with shock and disbelief. It is with much regret that we came to the conclusion that we were going to be unable to turn the bleeding around.

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PETERBOROUGH, Ontario – He received his masters of aeronautical engineering in Delft but many people will remember Jack van Winssen (1926-May 2012) as Jack the Klompenmaker, in his retirement years entertaining crowds at Ontario regional events, the Canadian Tulip Festival, and beyond in places from New York to Oregon and Washington State.

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THE HAGUE – Second Chamber member Cora van Nieuwenhuizen-Wijbenga has introduced a legislative proposal to pare welfare payments down to people who fail to learn the Dutch language. If it is determined that claimants lack the language profi...

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KENNEMERDUINEN - Birding is alive and well in the Netherlands. The so-called vinkenbaan or vinkenbanen (birding centres)in plural are no longer places where small birds are caught as delicacies for the menus of the well-to-do ...

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HEERENVEEN – A newly dedicated monument in the Frisian town of Heerenveen reminds passersby of a dark episode in World War II history; the forced evacuations of entire towns and areas near battle zones between the defending German occupatio...

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EMMEN – The municipal real estate development arm has suffered a €10 million loss on residential and industrial building lots in 2011, which has prompted council to stop work on several projects around the southeastern Drenthe jurisdiction....

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NEER – The tradition-civic militias continue to flourish in the Netherlands but are now mostly found in towns and villages south of the great rivers. The schutterijen are most commonly found in the province of Limbourg where the Oud Limburg...

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MEPPEL – The devastating fire, which destroyed Meppel’s four centuries-old Schultehuis, has not been deliberately set. Instead, experts suspect that the fire’s cause originated from a malfunctioning heating system. Faced with the loss of a ...

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DIEMEN - Dutch food and ingredients group CSM wants to sell off its bakery business. The decision to offload the division is the result of CSM seeing its future as a bio-based ingredients supplier instead. The world's largest bakery ingredi...

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BEDFORD HILLS, NY - A Dutch American who escaped the Japanese for Australia as they occupied Java, received further training in Jackson, MS before joining the the 18th Dutch Squadron in Australia to earn several decorations in the battle against the Japanese. In his retirement he became the driving force in chronicling the history of his adopted New York State hometown.

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TORONTO, Ontario - The surprise resignation of long-serving Progressive Conservative MPP Elizabeth Witmer has shaken up the balance of power at Queen’s Park where Premier Dalton McGuinty governs with a Liberal Party minority. Just minutes after the Dutch-born MPP announced her departure from the province’s parliament, the McGuinty cabinet issued a notice that Witmer had been nominated as Chair of Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).

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HARDERWIJK – The skies over the Netherlands were among the fiercest aerial battle zones in Europe during World War II, where Allied aircraft caught in search lights were sitting ducks for German anti-aircraft fire and especially Allied bomb...

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OMMEN – The archives at Kamp Erica, a notorious wartime secondary penal camp operated by the Nazis, will be closed to researchers for the next 18 months. The collection is currently being digitized by the Dutch institution for war, Holocaus...

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HEERHUGOWAARD - The so-called Dutch ’sleeping dikes’, a secondary dike behind a main levee (a U.S. equivalent for dike), will no longer be off limits in the jurisdiction of water board Noorderkwartier for various activities, including const...

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ZOETERMEER - Chinese spies operate freely in the Netherlands, providing information on innovative technology companies and on the Uighur community – a Turkish-Chinese ethic minority group in Western China - to the Chinese authorities. The D...

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MONTEVIDEO - The passengers of Antarctic expedition cruise ship MV Plancius got more than they had bargained for. The Plancius experienced mechanical problems causing it to take shelter alongside the jetty of King Edward Point Research Stat...

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VITÓRIA, Brazil - The Rotterdam port authority has signed a port development deal with the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, the municipality of Presidente Kennedy and project developer Terminal Presidente Kennedy for the development of Po...

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THE HAGUE - The Protestant Church (PKN) of The Hague which uses 27 buildings of which the congregation owns 17, needs to reorganize to avoid serious financial problems, an outside committee reports. It advised the church’s ruling body to ph...

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LANGLEY, BC – Passenger John Immerseel who as a young child came to Canada in April 1952 aboard the Sibajak wants to connect with his fellow travelers of 60 years ago. Now retired from a Parks Canada position, John has already devoted countless hours to document his family’s history and wants to add a chapter to it about his Sibajak journey.

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ESPELO - A record-high Easter Bonfire (although not an exact translation, in the Dutch language, a paasbult), was reduced to a heap of ashes in the Twente town of Espelo recently but not before Dutch notaries completed the documentation for an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.

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Was he of Jewish or of French origin? That question has pained the descendents of Siebe Sjoerds in recent years. Why did this elderly Akkerwoude man register the surname Van der Galiën as his own? If he had settled on Sjoerdsma the choice would have been obvious, Siebe, the son of Sjoerd. He did not, however, and declared before the 1811 clerk Gerrit Jimmes Kloosterman it would be Van der Galiën.

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BURUM, the Netherlands - A 225-year-old windmill in the northern Dutch town of Burum, in the province of Friesland, has burned to the ground. The fire devoured the grain mill, called Windlust (freely translated as Appetite for wind), in minutes.

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LOCHEM - Cooperatives have done well in the Netherlands. Its largest mortgage provider had its start as a rural-based cooperative money pools, now known as the Rabobank, a stable institution which does not depend on stock market value fluct...

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HAARLEM – The number of older Dutch Bible translations posted online has again increased in recent times. The website biblija.net now also grant access to early Dutch translations such as the 1542 Van Liesvelt Bible, the 1548 Leuven Bible, ...

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MOSCOW – It is not a well-know fact that there are Russian soldiers buried in Dutch soil nor that there is a Russian war cemetery in the Netherlands as the resting place of over 800 soldiers who died in German captivity in Camp Amersfoort d...

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ROTTERDAM – The austerity measures taken earlier by the central Dutch government, involving deep cuts, are reverberating through all of Dutch society. As a result, local governments such as municipalities can expect less funding, forcing th...

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KERKRADE – A number of pages cut from handwritten medieval books have resurfaced in the binding of fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century printed books. Bookbinders reused these pages to solidify the binding of new books because they ...

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ANTWERP – the Schmallenberg Virus is a new emerging livestock disease that has been detected in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It is similar to some other animal disease pathogens, such as Akabane and Shamonda viruses, which ...

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For a small country such as the Netherlands to be the world’s leading supplier of seed potatoes is, pardon the pun, no small potatoes. The Dutch grow a high quality product, thanks to good climate conditions, suitable soil, strict and high quality inspection standards, backed cultivation expertise and university-level research as well as a comprehensive industry and export system. All these factors contribute to a success story which has its roots far back in history.

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Tens of thousands of organ fans attended and enjoyed the concerts given by master organist Feike Asma on his (annual) tours through Canada and the U.S.A. Invited by his friend Gerard de Lugt, who had settled in Hamilton, Ontario, Asma went on his first North American tour in December 1959. He liked what he saw and kept returning. He was impressed with the numerous organs he had discovered in North America, where he continued his breathtaking pace by giving several concerts a week, sometimes on nearly a daily schedule.

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BEING - Chinese authorities want to set up an outlet in The Netherlands for the National Academy for Mayors of China. They are interested in working together with existing advisory and academic institutes in The Hague in the area of public administration.

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AMSTERDAM - Diederik Samsom, who was elected leader of the Dutch Labour party (PvdA) recently, has been arrested ten times by police during his tenure as a Greenpeace activist, he revealed in a recent daily newspaper interview.

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COPENHAGEN – The European Union needs to be more active in defending threatened and oppressed religious minorities elsewhere in the world. That is the conclusion of EU’s council of ministers of Foreign Affairs (FA). Dutch FA minister Uri Ro...

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ASSEN – The eastern and north-eastern Dutch provinces are not satisfied with the answer to their request for an upgrade to the current status of the Lower Saxon regional language, now generally considered a dialect. Groningen, Drenthe, Over...

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AMSTERDAM - The only Dutch pope, Adrianus VI, who was elected in January 1522 as a compromise candidate, has been characterized as an unmannered barbarian, a hater of the arts and an egoist, who disliked Rome. Not true, writes Birgit Emich,...

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THE HAGUE - The police will step up its supervision of aliens in order to reduce the number of illegal residents in the Netherlands. This year, the Aliens Police plans to transfer 4,800 illegal aliens to the Repatriation and Departure Servi...

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EGMOND AAN ZEE - A new underground water filtration system on the grounds of the "Prins Hendrik Stichting" has produced a large quantity of surplus sand, which has been used to upgrade Egmond’s eroding coastline. A contractor sifted thousan...

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SEOUL, Korea - World leaders pledged to secure all vulnerable nuclear material by 2014 and to boost security to keep the ingredients for atomic weapons out of the hands of terrorists. U.S. President Barack Obama, his Russian counterpart Dmi...

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Just picture it. You are an entrepreneur, one of many, who depends on a very popular product but also with one for which there are just not enough customers at home because of the enormous quantities you have for sale. So you take your samples throughout Europe and England, but the number of orders are still insufficient to take all of your inventory. Then they tell you, did you try the United States and Canada yet? So you book passage on an ocean liner to find customers abroad, including some Dutch immigrants.

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AMSTERDAM - Many foreigners visiting the Netherlands go home with the impression that the Dutch love their bicycles, perhaps the way Americans are passionate about cars. But does this impression pass the reality check? Are they aware of an ongoing battle by Dutch cities to control the "blight" of abandoned, wrecked and inappropriately parked bicycles, which litter city centres and bicycle parking lots at railway stations everywhere across the country?

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MADISON/STEENDEREN - The recent World Champion Cheese Contest produced a shock winner in its annual search for the best cheese in the world. They crowned a low-fat Gouda named Vermeer, from dairy conglomerate Friesland Campina, as the 2012 champion, upstaging traditional winners such as Switzerland and France.

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AMSTERDAM – Dutch officials like to present The Netherlands abroad as a knowledge-based economy. There are two recent external studies which confirm that there is truth to this otherwise self-serving claim. According to the Times Higher Education, the World Reputation Rankings 2012, five Dutch universities won their position among the world’s top education establishments. An earlier list ranks The Netherlands third overall.

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AMSTERDAM – Dutch religious organizations are not fueling the polarization between Muslims and the Islam on the one side and other groups on the other side. Instead, they have reacted to the recent spate of anti-Islamic comments by forging ...

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HAAKSBERGEN - The Railway Museum foundation MBS hopes to upgrade its facility from a general tourism destination into one with a strong vocational training component as well, modeled after the programs offered at Batavia Wharf at distant Le...

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GENEVA - United Nations Special Rapporteur Heiner Bielefeldt recently argued that “official ‘State religions’ should never be used for purposes of national identity politics, as this may have detrimental effects for the situation of indiv...

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DALFSEN – Critics call plans to remove trees along the characteristic oak treed lane, the Poppenallee, which continues as the Rechterensedijk at some point, the destruction of a landscape. A map from 1742 reveals that the route, then a dirt...

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SOESTERBERG – The bomb disposal units of the Dutch military EOD, the army, navy and the air force, now have a joint head office at the Soesterberg armory. Queen Beatrix opened the facility by guiding a remote bomb removal robot to lift off ...

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Onderduiken: a Dutch term, describing the act of purposely disappearing without a trace during the German occupation of The Netherlands; literally, to dive under (water).

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THE HAGUE - The battle of the Java Sea was recently commemorated at a ceremony in The Hague. On February 27, 1942 more than 1,000 Dutch and 1,200 Allied sailors lost their lives in an attempt to stop a Japanese invasion fleet headed for the then Netherlands East Indies (NEI), present-day Indonesia.

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RIJSWIJK - Around 250 Dutch couples said “I do” on the 2012 Leap Day, on February 29, reports Central Statistics Bureau (CBS) in the Netherlands. That is twice as many weddings as on an average Wednesday in February.

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BERLIN - Germany and The Netherlands plan to jointly nominate the Limes Germanicus as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Limes is the border from 57 BC until around 400 AD between the Roman Empire and the Germanic lands to its north. Remnants of the Limes can be found everywhere in the landscape.

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ENSCHEDE – Dutch nature lovers have taken their interest in bats, birds and bees to a new level, literally. While in other countries ‘hotels’ of every shape are springing up, the Dutch have instead constructed one with bricks and mortar in ...

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SCHIPHOL - KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Kenya Airways claim to be the first carriers in the airfreight industry to offer direct service between China and Africa. The service connects China’s key industrial zone in Guangdong with the Kenyan ...

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UTRECHT - During the recent 12-day cold snap, over 13,000 skaters were treated for injuries sustained on the ice, a huge jump from an average of 200 skaters requiring medical attention from mishaps on artificial ice. About 8,400 skaters cam...

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GENEVE - United Nations’ groups advocate greater participation of women in all levels of society. Two different recent reports offer a conflicting view of Dutch society, the one, a U.N. report, ranks The Netherlands eight out a possible 188...

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It probably was nothing more than just coincidence that the Dutch government of the day in 1727 sent a new ambassador named Cornelis Calkoen to the Ottoman Empire. The coincidence is more obvious today, considering that this country is now better known as Turkey which is the translation as well of Calkoen. It sounds good, Mr. Calkoen off to Turkey!

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HAMBURG, New Jersey - As a young mother, Sietje Cornelia (Katje or Kee) Hof (Van der Stad) put her babies in a wooden crate when she went into the fields to work. At the age of 47, she and her husband Hendrik and two daughters left the Netherlands for New Jersey in 1948, as so many other ‘islanders’ had done before them since the 1860s. She preferred a quiet life with her family and lived with her younger sister Klaartje de Waal, ten years her junior, at the time of her death, fourteen days short of her 111th birthday, as a supercentennarian.

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PANHE, China - Dutch freelance journalist Remko Tanis, who resides in Shanghai, came away from a recent assignment as a kicked and beaten man. The attack took place at a Chinese village where villagers were protesting an illegal land grab by officials, one of numerous such cases throughout China.

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ROSARIO, Argentina – Dutch hockey captain Maartje Paumen (26) has been honoured by her fellow FIH international hockey players by being named as the women’s Player of the Year for 2011. She was presented with her prize at the Argentina FIH ...

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SPAARNWOUDE – People wanting to see a unique farming operation with rare animal breeds will find Informatieboerderij Zorgvrij (literally Information farm Carefree) an interesting place to visit. If you agree, you will not be alone. I...

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SINT-ANNALAND - The world’s longest sampler, a nostalgic decorative piece in the past used by women to decorate their interior walls, in Dutch called a merklap, is on display in De Meestoof, at least the one half created by the Thole...

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BRUSSELS - Europe continues to be world’s leading region in terms of corruption-free governance, according to the latest (November 2009) survey by Transparency International (TI), the Berlin-based watch-dog on corruption around the world. T...

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AMSTERDAM - The best-known work by Dutch priest Desiderius Erasmus is without a doubt The Praise of Folly, known to the Dutch as Lof der Zotheid, a satirical attack on the traditions of the European society, of the Roman Catholic Church of ...

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The run-up to the elusive Eleven Cities Race is nearly every time full of suspense and not a little bit of drama. And as unpredictable as the weather, some realists will say. After all, the number of times that this mother of all outdoor marathon skating races was held, likely is easily outpaced by the number of times it was collectively ruled to be a no-go by the organizers.

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THE HAGUE - Children of 4,000 strong Ukrainian-Dutch community are now able to follow supplementary courses in the language of their parents at the facilities of British School in The Netherlands. The new location for Veselka offers the group growth potential at its convenient location.

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THE HAGUE - Plans for the construction of three Hindu temples, so-called mandirs, as well as apartments and commercial space in the Laakhaven West rejuvenation project, are on track. The Hague’s officials recently signed a declaration of intent with project developers.

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BARRIE, Ontario - Crown Attorney Enno Meijers who prosecuted criminal cases since he was called to the Bar in 1990, will now weigh evidence in the cases assigned to him as Justice of the Ontario Court of Justice.

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THE HAGUE – At age 74, Queen Beatrix is the eldest governing monarch in Dutch history. She surpassed previous record holder King Willem III on November 4 at age 73 years and 277 days, the same age as her great-grandfather, who passed away o...

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BUSSUM – Holocaust survivor Ernst Verduin continues to share his recollections of the war years, when he, aged 18, was shipped from Amsterdam to Westerbork, and then to the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. To tell his story, Ve...

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AMSTERDAM – The sale of the Het Concertgebouw anniversary shares has netted the organization over €6,25 million to date. Het Concertgebouw celebrates its 125th anniversary next year. The aim of the anniversary shares is to put this world-re...

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ROTTERDAM – The largest Dutch housing corporation Vestia is experiencing serious liquidity problems, thanks to investments in highly speculative financial derivates. Instead of netting quick millions from which to build more public housing,...

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VALKENSWAARD – This southern Dutch town has a stand-alone festival, the International Scarecrow Festival, which held its seventh biannual edition in October 2011. So far, organizers operated on a shoestring budget and plenty of enthusiasm. ...

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It is no longer a ‘hidden’ pearl of the Netherlands: the Roerdal, but do explore it more closely when visiting the Netherlands next time. The Roerdal or the Roer Valley is quite different from, let’s say, Het Groene Hart, the Green Heart with its low-lying, flat as a pancake meadows that are lined with waterways, wide and narrow. If the Green Heart rates as typically Dutch, the Roerdal merits as Dutch with a difference, and be still more interesting.

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ROTTERDAM - The plan for a Dutch research facility in Antarctica is one step closer to realization. Three mobile labs will be sent via the UK port of Southampton to Antarctica by ship. A fourth lab will follow at a later date.

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LONDON – The list of largest economies in the world is about to change. The Netherlands, which has basically ranked fifteenth or sixteenth on the list for decades, is expected to slip to a more modest ranking as larger countries are pushing themselves up the ladder.

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AACHEN, Germany - Officials in Germany are taking again a hard look at arresting remaining elderly Nazi war-criminals. They already incarcerated one 90-year-old former Dutch-German SS assassin who recently began his life sentence handed down by a German court for executing three civilians in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.

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ROTTERDAM - The port city’s municipal councilors, executives (wethouders) and mayor, all received a new book as a Christmas present recently from their Christian factions’ colleagues on council. The book God in the stad by author Gea Gort f...

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BUDAPEST, Hungary - Speed skater Sven Kramer has netted another all-around title at the recent European speed skating championships. The Dutch four-time European champ won the men's 1,500 meters and 10,000 to claim his fifth European crown....

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THE HAGUE - The Dutch army, which has mothballed most of its tanks due to budget cuts, may be training on German tanks in the future so it will not lose its experience with this type of weaponry, army commander General Mart de Kruif says. T...

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AMSTERDAM - Visitors to the Dutch capital may have wondered about the lack of barriers along the city’s canals. Does no one ever fall into the water? They do! In fact, new statistics have revealed that over the past three years at least 50 ...

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EMMEN - A local dolmen or hunebed, in the English language also known as a portal tomb, portal grave, or quoit, a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting large flat horizontal ca...

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ENTER - Nu breekt mijn klomp is a saying Dutch rural folks use to express their astonishment at amazing or startling news. The disappearance of the country’s largest wooden shoe – a klomp measuring 4 by 2 metres and weighing over 2,0...

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How exciting is the visit to a country as flat as a pancake? If views above ground do not do the trick, consider the idea of going underground. The Netherlands offers tourists a look at a city from the bottom up, so to speak. A tour of the bowels and or hidden waterways of the southern Dutch provincial capital of ’s-Hertogenbosch is very unique and unmatched elsewhere.

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AMERSFOORT, the Netherlands - Dutch zookeepers have found an unorthodox solution to calm down skittish giraffes spooked by the sound of thousands of firecrackers going off at New Year Eve. The zoos play pop music to keep the giraffes at ease.

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AMSTERDAM - The five Olympic rings that had been illegally removed from Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium just before Christmas, have been returned to its owners by a Frisian New Year’s Eve club known for its high-profile pranks.

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MAURIK – The Dutch continue to face deadly reminders of the Allied bombing sorties against targets in the Netherlands to obstruct the German war effort. Just recently boatloads of sludge dredged from river and canal bottoms and transported ...

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GENDRINGEN – A major multi-year documentation effort is underway in the Achterhoek region of the Dutch province of Gelderland, which will see the listing of about two million people online. The website www.ecal.nu can already be consulted b...

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KAMPEN - The new Hanseatic League currently has 176 member towns and cities in 16 European countries, making it the largest voluntary association of towns and cities in the world. The members comprise include some of the former large tradin...

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LEEUWARDEN – A new film aims to reconnect today’s Dutch with the exploits of their ancestors four centuries ago. Historians are not applauding. Back in 1596, a Dutch sea-faring expedition, looking for passage to China and the Indies somewhe...

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MOSCOW - André Kuipers’ interest in flying has taken him further and longer in space than another Dutch astronaut. In 2004 he participated in an eleven-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), now he is back there for a 5,5 mon...

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I amsterdam. A clever branding concept, which, one could argue, misses a (heart-shaped) object between the I and Amsterdam. The huge sculpted letters are a confirmed attraction to people, who literally crawl all over this street-level attraction while taking pictures of filming it. When considering the attention it receives, I amsterdam must be rated as a very successful advertising tool which is nestling itself in many photo albums and video footage.

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Turkeye, the Netherlands? Where did you say? Never heard of it!

It is reasonable to assume that 99 percent of the population of the Netherlands has not heard of this place before or visited it. For centuries, this hamlet, Turkeye, was hard to reach and isolated from mainstream Dutch society. It still takes a significant effort to get this small hamlet which has a very surprising origin and refers to a very unique anecdote in Dutch history.

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BRUSSELS - The forecasts for the economy of the Netherlands may not be the most encouraging for the coming year, but it had almost the best standard of living in the entire European Union last year, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency.

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LONDON - The Netherlands has taken the top spot in an annual survey of national pension schemes around the world. The Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index ranked retirement income schemes of sixteen countries around the world on the basis of three key qualities: adequacy (appropriate provision of benefits), sustainability (the long-term durability of the system) and integrity (the regulation of private pension schemes, including the protection given to members).

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UTRECHT – The new city hall towers of Utrecht will be the highest of its kind at 92 metres in the Netherlands but will not overtake the highest building of Utrecht. The Dom tower, dating from 1254 and 112,32 metres high, will keep its disti...

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GRONINGEN - The closing date to apply as host region for Floriade 2022 has now closed. Seven cities or regions have indicated their desire to organize the 2020 event. The Dutch Horticultural Council (NTR) says that the Region Rivierenland, ...

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EINDHOVEN – Dead fish, very dark water and metres-high foam described the Belgian-Dutch creek Dommel rather well not that many years ago. The Dommel was totally without life, the result of unrestricted pollution. A tributary of the Dieze, a...

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DEN BOSCH – Cultural heritage experts have discovered sixteenth-century murals during the demolition of a building in the old city core of Den Bosch, the capital of North Brabant. The three-dimensional murals, using the then-common techniqu...

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BEIJING - The Chinese Minister for Religious Affairs has invited Amsterdam’s Free University to organize a conference in Beijing on the theme religion as “contributor to social cohesion.” The request was made to Free University officials Re...

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SCHARNEGOUTUM – Twenty-year old ict-student Rinse Ringma, who also is a musician with Sneek-based Advendo has utilized his computer skills by scanning his music which he now reads from his e-reader. He developed a music protocol to accommod...

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NEW WESTMINSTER, BC - A 25-year Dutch community Sinterklaas Welcome, originally spearheaded by the local Hyack Festival Association, which also organizes the Santa Claus parade, was cancelled amid wide-spread publicity by lead organizer Taco Slump. At issue was the soot-covered face of the character Zwarte Piet, a “racist” expression according to Black Community spokesman, a Mr. Jones.

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Technology has been advancing at a pace only teenagers seem to be able to keep up with, for awhile at least. For everyone else, the developments continue at such a dazzling speed so that even the most technology advanced individuals sooner or later will show signs of fatigue. This fast paced-progress has a serious downside when outdated and discarded ways and methods, the launching pads and the stepping stone of progress, disappear from memory. Do technology wizards when lost on a hiking trail with a failing lighter still know how to kindle a fire the old tried and proven way? Do they know how to find a specific listing in a print phonebook?

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THE HAGUE - A motion by the Geert Wilders’ PVV to take up the cause of the Papuans, who struggle for independence from Indonesia, received majority support in the Second Chamber recently. PVV’er Wim Kortenoeven asked Foreign Affairs Ministe...

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UTRECHT – Over one thousand theological students from Hungary have been helped by a Dutch scholarship fund over the past 250 years. Stipendium Bernardinum, founded in 1761 after the death of the Dutch merchant Daniel Bernard Guiljammz and i...

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AMSTERDAM - Work on the troublesome Noord/Zuidlijn, the underground metro, which has to connect Amsterdam-North with the so-called Zuidas on the South, has passed a major hurdle now that the future Vijzelgracht station site has a floor. The...

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IJSSELSTEIN – The sponsors of the world’s tallest Christmas tree have been unable to realize a 2011 edition on account of the July fire in the Gerbrandijtoren near this central Dutch community. The 366-meter transmission tower sustained ser...

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BERGEN OP ZOOM - Oliebollen, some bakers advertise them as Dutch doughnuts, is in the vast majority of situations a baked delicacy reserved just for New Year’s Eve. But in this Western Brabant town’s baker John Dauphin who operates his busi...

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There are very few legendary figures in the Netherlands who are as broadly recognized as is St. Nicolaas, by Dutch children also widely known as Sinterklaas. In the Dutch experience, it is very obvious that his presence in the country kicks off the most widely celebrated events.

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THE HAGUE - A Second Chamber majority does not support a proposal that would require Dutch nationals who take out citizenship in their country of choice to forgo their Dutch passport. The draft legislation would rule out dual nationality for those living in the Netherlands as well as those residing overseas.

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OUD GASTEL, the Netherlands - Two of the world’s leading manufacturers of specialized harvesting equipment, U.S.-based Oxbo International Corp. and Ploeger Agro B.V. of the Netherlands, have merged to create the Ploeger Oxbo Group, the world’s largest manufacturer of harvesting equipment and related products for niche agricultural markets. The new company is headquartered in the Netherlands.

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LEIDEN – The 450th anniversary of the Belgic Confession has prompted renewed attention of Reformation times in the Netherlands. Two universities hosted a symposium of the document, which is one of three confessions cherished by many contine...

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AMSTERDAM - Dutch pension funds have agreed to start mapping out all costs related to pensions and asset management and report the results to their participants in a "world's first". The Pension Federation, which held its first annual confe...

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THE HAGUE - Former Finance Minister and Labour party leader Wouter Bos, who served in a Balkenende cabinet, agrees with Dutch sociologist Paul Schnabel who recently said that there is a way around the government’s problem of rising healthca...

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AMSTERDAM - Following its reopening on October 4, Het Scheepvaartmuseum, the National Maritime Museum, attracted nearly 70,000 visitors to the museum. Especially during the second half of the month, many people used their Fall break from sc...

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WINTERSWIJK – How does a museum survive when it loses its funding? It is the question Museum Freriks considered when news of the cuts sank in. Although the museum will be shut down, its owner, a foundation, is looking at creating alliances ...

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TILBURG - The former fire hall at the St. Annahof will get another lease on life. The now vacant building had been used by an artist for the past 25 years and will be turned into several housing units, while several other structures on the ...

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ZWOLLE – There are few toy concepts in the world which can compete for the attention of both adults and children the way Lego does. And in Lego World there is no other country which promotes the toy the way the Dutch do. No other Lego event in the world outdraws the eight-day event held annually in the Dutch mid-eastern provincial capital of Zwolle.

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BRANTFORD, Ontario - A Dutch pipe and drum band, modeled after the one of the 48th Highlanders of Canada, which helped liberate the band’s hometown of Apeldoorn, was scheduled to play in various Ontario cities, including Brantford and Burlington.

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DEN HELDER, the Netherlands - A Dutch submarine sunk in 1941 by the Japanese has been found in the South China Sea, near Borneo. The vessel, with the code name HNLMS K XVI, went down with 36 crew members aboard after it was hit by a Japanese torpedo on December 25, 1941. The wreck was found following a recent tip from a local fisherman.

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THE HAGUE - The future of a proposed ban on ritual slaughter in the Netherlands may be in doubt after all, since the VVD party faction of the First Chamber does not seem to be very eager to support the legislation, adopted by the Second Cha...

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DOUMEN, China - Nutreco has successfully completed the Zhuhai Shihai Feed acquisition. The fish and shrimp feed supplier had in 2010 revenue of about $70 million. This acquisition provides Nutreco’s fish feed business a production base in C...

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HARDERWIJK – The central Dutch city of Harderwijk (its city charter dates from 1231 when it was walled soon afterwards) was between 1648 and 1811 home to a university, in academic circles frowned upon as a poor man’s institution although it...

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PANAMA CITY – World title record holder Cuba, which has taken the world championship baseball 25 times since the 1938 inaugural edition, lost the 2011 Baseball World Cup to ‘newcomer’ the Netherlands recently. The Dutch win was the first ti...

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ZUIDLAREN – Wet and cold! The early hours of the 811th edition of the annual horse market day did not look promising it all but turned into a beautiful day once the sun broke through the cloud cover. The breakthrough brought out a happy thr...

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Many Dutch families are known by surnames that are not particularly Dutch even though they may have little or no foreign roots. Families in this category frequently owe their identity to ancestors who followed a tradition among university and Latin school graduates to Latinize their surname. Less popular was the custom to use a Greek version of one’s surname.

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SURREY, British Columbia - Annual bazaars are popular with many organizations in the postwar Dutch communities, particularly in Canada, where they gained traction as fundraisers and venues where old acquaintances and friends can be met in an old-country style market atmosphere. Notably auxiliary support groups of the many membership-funded Christian schools have developed a tradition of funding non-budgetary extras for school boards focused on keeping tuition fees as affordable as possible.

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THORNHILL, Ontario - The giant biennial volunteer undertaking, deemed to be the largest of all such endeavours in the postwar Dutch immigrant community in North America, has in its one-day event come within a hair of its 2009 record setting net result of $123,000. In far more difficult times than its previous edition, the Committee "Netherlands Bazaar" still raised $120,000 this year. Lead organizer Gé Spaans attributes the success of the Toronto-area event solely to the dedication of its numerous volunteers and a long list of sponsors, headed by DUCA Financial Services Credit Union Ltd., KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Verstraete Travel & Cruises. They offered as raffle prizes a term deposit of $1,500 and trips to the Netherlands (won by Jacqueline Johnston, the Harry Speelmans and Liz van Onlangs, respectively).

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ROSEVILLE, California - Rabobank, N.A., a growing community bank with 118 branches in California, has expanded its local and statewide banking service network by partnering with the Walgreens drug store retail chain. Rabobank customers will now be able to use the ATMs at more than 500 Walgreens stores throughout California free of service charges.

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AMSTERDAM – Hundreds of cultural agencies and groups showcase their exhibitions and activities during the month of October, which the National Historical Museum has declared History Month, using the theme ”ik en wij” which literally transla...

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AMSTERDAM – Dutch Forestry Service Staatsbosbeheer is looking for management proposals of a small island located in the IJmeer near Amsterdam. Vuurtoreneiland (which translates as Lighthouse Island), the size of two soccer fields, is the si...

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UTRECHT – Rabobank’s top banker Piet Moerland is cautiously optimistic that European leaders will reach a consensus on the euro currency crisis. He suggested that there is no quick fix but one that requires a steady effort on the road to re...

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NIEUWEGEIN - Dutch society strives on being open. Part of the tradition is holding open houses on an industry-wide basis which individual firms can opt to join on a certain date and time. The national realty organization NVM recently held s...

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EEMNES – Thanks to the Historical Circle Eemnes, a village near the central Dutch city of Utrecht, two elderly Dutch emigrants returned home from abroad for a reunion at their wartime hiding place, located across the street from the village...

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THE HAGUE – The municipalities, which issue the compulsory card every resident must show for their identification, were charging a fee for the card without the proper legal authority for these costs. All those renewing their card were provi...

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THE HAGUE – Productschappen (commodity boards) and bedrijfschappen (industrial boards) may not be unique to the Netherlands, but their organizational model definitely is. While other countries have institutions that do similar...

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The contemporary Dutch traveler who visits the farthest region of the earth in all likelihood has never set a foot in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. Formerly very isolated, the southwestern corner of the Netherlands, can now be reached quickly via the Scheldt tunnel while in earlier times a ferry ride was the only viable option. That this Dutch part of Flanders was important to the Netherlands can be determined from the series of fortifications along the southern border.

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VELSEN - A contingent of serving and retired members of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (also known by their nickname Hasty Ps) recently made a pilgrimage to the Netherlands to retrace their predecessors' campaign of 1945. The itinerary included a visit to Juno Beach and Vimy Ridge before crossing the French and Belgian borders into the Netherlands.

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UTRECHT - The financial industry has been a “destabilizing and parasitic” factor in the economy over the past number of decades. The industry should drop its short-term thinking and put itself in the service of society.

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SUAPE, Brazil - A leading Dutch dredging firm, which has been operating in Brazil for over two decades already, has been awarded two dredging projects in the country’s coastal port of Suape in the State of Pernambuco. The two contracts landed by Van Oord are worth more over 165 million euros. Work is expected to start this year still.

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ROTTERDAM - Neste Oil, a large Finnish firm, has started up Europe’s largest renewable bio fuel plant on the Rotterdam Maasvlakte. The plant was completed on budget and on schedule. The production in Rotterdam will be increased gradually for a possible maximum capacity of 800,000 tons per year.

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EDE - Strong winds and heavy clouds hampered the recent commemorative Airborne droppings at the Ginkel heath near Ede, where in total of about 1,000 paratroopers jumped. Six parachutists sustained slight injuries. The landings were part of ...

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CRUQUIUS – The Society (Vereniging) Hendrick de Keyser has completed its restoration of the historic steam-driven pumping station De Cruquius. The facility, along with the pumping stations 'Leeghwater" and "Lijnden" helped drain the Haarlem...

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SOEST/BOXMEER – Dutch Roman Catholic dioceses are following the trends towards reorganizations and mergers. Eight central Dutch parishes in the area around Soest merged into one large entity, while in southern Dutch city of Boxmeer three lo...

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UTRECHT - This year marks the 450th anniversary of the Belgic Confession whose author was a Walloon pastor, Guido de Bres. The Confession (called the Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis in Dutch) landed inside the castle at Tournai (the Dutch ca...

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AMSTERDAM – The monumental homes on the Amsterdam Vijzelstraat, which had been seriously damaged when the foundation shifted as a result of the city’s tunneling for a new underground commuter line, are inhabitable again following a major co...

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RIJSWIJK - After 16 years of sponsorship Rabobank will extend this support to a women’s cycling team in 2012. The team will be built around multiple world champion Marianne Vos. The giant cooperative Rabobank finds starting a women’s team a...

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As contradictory as it may sound, flowers are not the key ingredients that hold together the many dazzling Dutch flowers parades scheduled each year throughout the country. Nor do the great majority of these parades have anything to do with tulip growers and the Bollenstreek. In fact, most of these parades were not even founded by organizers aiming to promote flowers and horticulture. But they certainly use flowers in an amazing way.

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PUTTEN - Dozens of households in Canada and the USA are known by the surname Vandergoot. It is not surprising therefore, that a member of the Vandergoot clan would at some point raise the question, “What actually does my grandfather’s last name mean.” He was not very happy with the explanation given in a Dutch dictionary of the noun goot: trench, drain, gutter, among others. From the gutter?

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LEIDEN – The newlyweds of this historic western Dutch city seem eager to get more usage out of their wedding dress. Eager to show it off once more without their bridegroom besides them, they responded to the call by the weekly Flair to ente...

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HARLINGEN – The Waddensea seaweed areal was decimated in the 1930s. The seaweed or zeewier or zeegras as the Dutch call this species, gave many people in coastal villages – Wieringen, Texel, Terschelling, Urk and Elburg to name some - a liv...

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UTRECHT – Nearly one in four people in the Netherlands still reside in the area of their ancestors. That is the conclusion of researcher Gerrit Bloothooft of the University Utrecht and the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam. He particularly na...

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BRUSSELS - Of all the European countries, The Netherlands is most exposed to natural hazards and climate change, the World Risk Report for 2011 reveals. According to the authors, the findings show that disaster risk is always composed of tw...

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DOORN – Hundreds of Dutch veterans have shared their stories of life while serving in the Dutch military during missions abroad in the former Dutch East Indies and countries such as the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon and Cambodia, to name but a...

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MÖNCHENGLADBACH, Germany - The national women’s Dutch field hockey team has claimed its eighth title in ten European championship editions recently. The Dutch team defeated their German host in the finals with a 3-0 victory. Earlier this pa...

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HAARLEM – Next Generation Aircrafts, formerly known as Rekkof, promises to have a highly modernized prototype of the current Fokker 100 ready in two years. The news was announced during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first ...

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AMSTERDAM - Former conservative liberal leader Frits Bolkestein, an EU-skeptic, who following his VVD-leadership in the Second Chamber, departed for a European Commissioner post in Brussels in 1998, has again aimed strongly-worded criticism...

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AMSTERDAM - The Grachtenfestival (Festival of the Canals) claims it ushers in a new (classical) music season in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, with some performances and events performed in the open air amid the city’s unique atmosphere of ...

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AMSTERDAM - City people visiting the Netherlands may have thought that Dutch cleanliness is a commodity only readily found among the Dutch abroad, in places where at Dutch spring festivals people turn out in droves to scrub the streets. A n...

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BONTEBOK - Racing lawn tractors with speeds of over 100 clicks an hour is a new fad that seems to appeal to thousands of Dutch youths. Just recently various local clubs converged on a village in the northern Dutch village of Bontebok for na...

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Dutch municipality Stichtse Vecht, formed through the fairly recent merger of Breukelen, Loenen and Maarssen, has a rich and a long history. The Stichtse Vecht showcases this very well considering that its administrative centre is housed in an early buitenplaats, a rural lodge called Goudestein, built by fabulously rich Amsterdam merchant Jan Jacobszoon Huydecoper.

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RIJSWIJK, the Netherlands - Children raised in the Chinese-Dutch community are faring so well at school, that they are achieving better marks than their native Dutch classmates.

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PELLA, Iowa - Among the many eyes that recently focused on Iowa and its start of the next U.S. presidential election cycle were those of Dutch Ambassador Renée Jones-Bos, who made it her point to visit the state and its oldest Dutch American settlement, Pella. Founded in 1847, Pella’s early Dutch settlers were adherents of the Secession of 1834 who called their abode on the Iowa plains after the place of refuge of Biblical times in the Decapolis, beyond the River Jordan.

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DE BILT - The 360 millimetres of rain in the Netherlands since the start of Summer 2011 will earn it very likely a place in the top-three of wettest summers ever. Particularly July delivered the country an amount of precipitation rivaled only in July 1966. The amount of precipitation in August is considered to be ‘fairly normal’.

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ANDEREN, the Netherlands - One of the oldest farmhouses in Europe, dating from 1376, has been totally destroyed by fire. The wooden frame construction of the building, located in the tiny hamlet of Anderen, near Assen in the northern Dutch province of Drenthe, was very unique.

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WAGENINGEN, the Netherlands – Five universities and research institutes have joined Wageningen UR (University & Research centre) to research how the world’s food production can be doubled in a sustainable manner.

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TORONTO, Ontario - Canadian travel agents recently named Amsterdam airport Schiphol as their “Favorite International Airport” for the sixth consecutive year. Schiphol outstripped second place London Heathrow by nearly a 2 to 1 ratio, 1,957 to 1,014 points. Toronto and Vancouver ranked on the third and fourth places. Hongkong came in fifth. Frankfurt ranked again sixth.

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LYNDEN, Washington – It only took eleven minutes into the ride to make it official: Lynden’s annual agricultural fair had landed itself into the Guinnes Book of World Records with the largest ever hay ride. A lead man guided driver Jason Jansen and his ten semi trailers around the corners of the loop-shaped track in front of the spectator’s grandstand of the Northwest Washington Fair. The hay bale rows on the ten LTI trailer beds seated 639 people, up from the far more modest 2010 record of 249 in South Carolina.

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THE HAGUE - Dog license inspectors are going to turn up at your door soon. The Hague, the third largest city in the Netherlands, sternly warned its citizenry recently that its inspectors are about to start making extra checks on dog owners to track down anyone who is not paying their “dog tax.”

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The Dutch are known for traveling far and wide, exploring and mapping far away exotic places where they frequently left noticeable footprints and other evidence still visible centuries later. As a rule, much can be discovered about these journeys in antique journals, published upon the return from these travels. A search in archives is likely to turn up still more information, confirming significant benefit of keeping detailed travelogues and diaries.

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AMSTERDAM – A recently published survey ranks the Netherlands as the world’s leader in both outgoing investments abroad and in incoming foreign investments.

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UTRECHT - The last traditional post office in the Netherlands, on the Neude in Utrecht, will shut its doors for good on October 28. Between now and then, the remaining 13 other facilities will have been phased out as well.

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BEIJING - A Dutch airport consulting firm has been awarded the contract to build a new airport complex in the Chinese capital of Beijing. A new international airport, BNIA has been designed to handle up to 130 million passengers annually and will have a total of eight runways. The Hague-based firm NACO won the design competition held between top airport consultants from around the world.

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KINGSTON, Ontario - The longest serving honorary consul of the Netherlands in Canada, Dr. Hans Westenberg of Kingston, Ontario, was honoured with a very special Gold Medal of Merit at his recent retirement party.

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RIO DE JANEIRO - The Dutch dredging firm Van Oord continues to impress Brazilians with its unique Amazon project, a so-called ‘subsea rock installation’ on two natural gas pipelines for their country’s national oil and gas supplier Petrobras. While Van Oord has been active in Brazil for 25 years with offshore, dredging and marine activities, it is its first gas pipeline project that takes natural gas from the onshore Solimões basin to the northern inland city and Amazonas state capital of Manaus (population of 1.8 million).

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ZWOLLE – The deteriorating sewer system beneath the centuries old city core of the Overijssel capital is getting a new lease on life through a new invention: a resin coat. An invention that has already been called futuristic, it consists of...

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UTRECHT – A recent study suggests that nearly all church federations, but especially those rooted in the experiential camp, suffer from ministerial shortages. Some denominations increasingly rely on kerkelijk werkers (called hbo-theologen),...

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BRUSSELS - The European Commission recently proposed a new rule allowing firms better access when attempting to collect funds owing from one bank account to another in advance of a judgment. The Commission – the executive branch of the Euro...

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OOSTERBEEK – The safety of bicycling seniors deserves a higher priority, argues the bicycles section of the RAI organization in Amsterdam (the acronym stands for Rijwiel en Auto Industrie, Bicycle and Automobile Industry). The organizers ar...

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THE HAGUE – Dutch governments have attempted to slim down the country’s bureaucracy for some years already but usually failed to accomplish this goal. The current coalition led by Premier Mark Rutte of the conservative liberal faction VVD (...

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Dutch outdoor markets are a royal treat for numerous visitors to the Netherlands but one of the most neglected drawing cards in the arsenal of the country’s tourism promoters. While blog posts by visitors from abroad rave about visiting one or more of these outdoor markets in the Netherlands, the country’s tourism promoters do not get much beyond Alkmaar’s seasonal but famed cheese market.

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GUELPH, Ontario - A third Roffel family wants in on the history of the Waterman, the Dutch immigrant ship which led the way of numerous similar postwar Atlantic crossings. Retired Guelph homebuilder Harry Roffel, a nephew of Bouke Roffel who arrived in Canada on the Waterman in 1947, also came on the former Liberty class U.S. wartime supply ship. Bouke and his namesake Geert were the subject of a feature article in the June 7, 2011 issue, titled Two unrelated Roffel families seem to follow each other in print.

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UTRECHT - The Christian Labour union federation CNV has okayed the pension reform accord agreed to by the unions, the employer groups and the government. The CNV still wants the government to allow people in physically challenging trades to...

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THE HAGUE - The Second Chamber of the Dutch States General has passed a law effectively banning the ritual slaughter of animals, a move condemned by both Muslim and Jewish groups. The legislation sponsored by the two-member Animal Rights pa...

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ZIERIKZEE - Cobblestone layers were recently busy resurfacing the square at the historic Saint Jacobs residences, locally known as the St Jacobshofje. Not surprisingly, the site has been around for a very long time. It became city property ...

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DEN HELDER – The Northwestern Dutch city, which for centuries has been home to the Dutch navy, has launched an intensive public relations campaign dubbed ‘Den Helder kust de zee’. The PR campaign focuses on the Dutch noun ‘kust’, which has ...

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HILVERSUM - Apparently unrelated fires in the Netherlands have disabled two tall communication signal transmission towers within hours of each other, knocking off radio and television in large parts of the country. Both structures have been...

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Today's Dutch farmers are inclined to dismiss as interference the interest of urbanites in farming, especially the demands for keeping livestock in the fields, to limit factory farming and to expand “nature preservation” initiatives. If the farmers think that the urbanite interest in farming is a fad, hoping it will pass, they may have a surprise coming. In fact, this interest has a long history.

UTRECHT – Burgeoning economies elsewhere in the world are pushing the leading position of The Netherlands as a distributor to the background. A Rabobank report on the future of Dutch trade warns that the Netherlands needs to be proactive in order to slow or counter the trend.

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THE HAGUE – Nearly two out every three Dutch people want their government to focus on solving problems in the Netherlands, instead of dealing with issues abroad. These sentiments have grown stronger in recent years, a quarterly published by...

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THE HAGUE - On Saturday 25 June, The Netherlands celebrated Veterans’ Day in The Hague and in numerous other towns across the country. This year it was the seventh edition, appreciated by Dutch veterans of all campaigns, includes those invo...

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EEMSHAVEN – A huge Dutch ship propeller weighing 8,000 kilograms made history recently when thieves looking for quick cash had the bronze part picked up by a truck and crane, to be delivered to a scrap dealer in the Groningen area. Both the...

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UTRECHT – The concept of holding midnight services or events at over 200 churches throughout the country has netted about 40,000 participants. At some churches the event was one of total silence, at others there was debate, singing or dance...

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BEERTA - An unannounced night-time visit to her hog’s barn by an animal rights group has farmer Annechien ten Have-Mellema all up in arms. She has laid a complaint against Ongehoord, which illegally invaded the privacy of her operation with...

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ABBOTSFORD, BC- All veterans of the various Dutch military campaigns or actions are invited to attend an annual reunion which has been organized at the Van der Kooi farm near Abbotsford, BC, on Saturday, August 20.

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THE HAGUE - The scenic Vaartenroute has added a bicycling option besides walking and boating. It connects The Hague’s city centre to that of Rotterdam’s city and runs along the scenic Vaarten Route.

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PUTTEN – Churches in Western countries, including the Netherlands, can learn from persecuted Christians, so says Open Doors founder Anne van der Bijl. Persecuted Christians can teach fellow believers elsewhere what it means to have compassi...

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LEEUWARDEN – Very rare film footage of the 1941 Eleven Cities Race skating marathon has now been posted online, thanks to amateur-filmer and future emigrant Piet Wagter. He covered the event and took the footage with him when he emigrated, ...

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LEIDEN - A 95-year-old murder mystery has been solved, with the confession of a 96-year-old woman. Atie Visser shot contractor Felix Guljé in Leiden when he came to the door to meet his caller. During the WWII Nazi occupation, members of th...

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KASTEREN – Fruithof Bellefleur, now a out-of-control hobby of gardener Jan Zandbergen and his wife Jeannie (van den Boom), is dedicated to preserving historic Dutch standard stock apple, pear and prune varieties. The gardener is employed at...

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THE HAGUE - The question of living safely behind Dutch dikes became more problematic when during the night of August, 25, 2003 a local Wilnis area dike was dislodged by some seven metres along a stretch of 60 metres. The calamity resulted i...

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On June 17, 2012 it will be 65 years ago since two separate and seemingly unrelated Roffel families climbed aboard the Dutch troop carrier Waterman, a ship anchored off the quay in the middle of the Rotterdam harbour for their one way trip to Canada. Apparently, they were never introduced to each other, since neither clan was aware of the other’s shared 9-day Waterman connection until recently. They may well have bumped into each other aboard the ship at some point.

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PELLA, Iowa – Dutch robotic milking systems manufacturer Lely has been given the green light to expand its production facilities at Pella, a town originally staked out by immigrants from the Netherlands in the late 1840s. Still known as a Dutch town today, Pella is now the headquarters location of Lely USA, a supplier of agricultural implements founded in the Netherlands in 1948. Branching out to the USA in 1963, Lely’s Pella expansion will significantly increase its production capacity to serve the North American market.

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UTRECHT, the Netherlands – On June 2, the city of Utrecht marked its 889th anniversary of the year it was granted city rights by Holy Roman Emperor Henry V in 1122. The central Dutch city started its annual celebration only two years ago.

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OTTERLO - A Dutch artist who has been specializing in studying horses and their ways and expressions in recent times, hosted British royalty during the recent Royal Windsor Horse Show when they casually wandered into his exhibit. Queen Eliz...

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WESTERBORK - A group of Drenthe comic strip enthusiasts have made a giant step towards the creation of a new theme park around the popular strip characters Jan, Jans en de kinderen (also known as Jack, Jackie and the Juniors). The organizer...

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SASSENHEIM – A redundant colossal, concrete building, Sassenheim water tower may be getting a new lease on life. Local real estate magnate Pieter Hermans thinks the towering structure definitely can have appeal to entrepreneurs who want a h...

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NOORDWIJK – The Dutch call it wildbreien but in the English speaking world this type of knitting or crocheting has gained coinage as yarn bombing, yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, literally graffiti knitting or street art that empl...

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THE HAGUE - Dutch army Leopard 2A6s recently fired their last shot on the Bergen-Hoehne range in Germany, sending military tank to the history books in the Netherlands. As part of its defense cuts, the Dutch military is retiring its last 60...

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The photographs on the center pages of the May 25, 2011 issue of the Windmill Herald all were taken in the Netherlands, including a very un-Dutch rolling landscape (Southern Limburg) and a desert scene (Veluwe). It is true, the country is not as flat as a pancake as some say it is, and not every area has been totally remade by Dutch ingenuity and muscle power.

RIJSWIJK - One quarter of all live births in the Netherlands took place at home in 2010. The remainder of the 184,000 babies were born in hospital.

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LEIDEN – Removal crews in Leiden pick up wrongly parked and abandoned bicycles routinely from the area around Leiden’s railway station. Annually, the crews bring about 5,000 of these two wheelers to the city’s warehouse where the owners can...

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THE HAGUE - The building in which the largest circular canvas in Europe is located, is being upgraded and renovated, while at the same time welcoming visitors to get a sweeping view of the sea, the wide beach, the dunes of Holland, and the ...

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THE HAGUE - The mega farm debate in the Netherlands is currently getting more and more emotional. Many people are concerned about the mega farms where several hundred cows are kept and never get to see a pasture. The public attaches great i...

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ZAANSTAD – The Verkade brand of bakery products and chocolates has a long history. This year marks 125 years since founder Ericus Gerhardus Verkade started baking bread and rusk at the site of the grain windmill De Ruyter, which lives on in...

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VEENDAM – The municipality and town of Veendam is again being served with a rail commuter service with Groningen City, the place where many of Veendam’s 28,000 residents find their employment and also go for shopping and other services. The...

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ENKHUIZEN – The historic village, the Zuiderzee Museum, which consists of buildings that were reassembled after the move from their original site somewhere around the IJssel Lake, has contracted the Rabobank for sponsoring its new 2011 them...

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BOVENKARSPEL – The bottom seems to have dropped out from under the market for forced tulips in the Netherlands. At auctions the tulips are being sold for prices far below the cost of forcing them, with a part of the supply being dumped to s...

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ARNHEM - Dutch Junior Minister of Security and Justice Fred Teeven, a former officier van justitie who oversees police investigations and prosecutions, has served notice his government will be introducing a proposal to expand victims’ right...

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EDMONTON, Alberta - Writing insurance policies may well be good training for authoring a book of one’s life story, at least if the book A Journal of a Dutch Immigrant is any indication.

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SCHIEDAM – Windmill operators rely on an unobstructed flow of wind. The rights to operate windmills were governed by various regulations which depended on history and local circumstances. The privilege of operating a windmill usually included protection from interference with the flow of wind.

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DE BILDT - Temperatures soared in the Netherlands during the recent Easter weekend, making it the warmest since the Dutch meteorological service started recording daily temperatures in 1901.

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GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan - Two denominations with roots in the Netherlands are pooling resources in church planting, helped with seed money from a family foundation set up by Amway billionaires Richard and Helen DeVos.

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AMSTERDAM – Dutch Internal Affairs Minister Piet Hein Donner wants to curtail the number of false fire alarms by rethinking the regulations for automatic fire alarms. He has gone on record saying he wants to restrict the compulsory systems ...

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HILVERSUM – A new documentary, called Soldiers in Black (in Dutch Zwarte Soldaten), offers six Dutch collaborators, veterans of the Dutch Waffen SS, for the first time to have their say on camera for public viewing. The six, t...

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ASSENDELFT – The plan to build two new residences at Dorpsstraat 861-863 generated much discussion about the value of the existing structures of which one is very characteristic for the area. Hence the call to preserve the building. Since t...

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HILVERSUM - Visiting the land of the Liberators and of family, friends and neighbours. That was the aim of a group of over 150 Dutch tourists who visited Ontario locations such as Grimsby, Brampton and Ottawa. The entire group is a member of the Evangelische Omroep (EO) broadcasting society in the Netherlands, which is known for its keen interest in North American developments in general, evangelical Christian trends and the welfare of Dutch immigrants in particular.

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Dutch Canadian community organizer Jack van der Laan was recognized recently at the Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards Gala by Tourism Burlington as the 2011 Tourism Ambassador Award Recipient. Tourism Burlington applauded the efforts of Jack van der Laan in establishing both a successful men’s clothing store and a continuing friendship and twinning between Burlington and the City of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands. Jack founded and leads the Canada Netherlands Friendship Association and its efforts to promote the international bond through tourist visits, cultural exchanges, and annual events. His constant dedication to fostering friendship and goodwill between the countries coupled with his passionate service to his city and community make Van der Laan a truly deserving recipient of this year’s award, noted Tourism Burlington.

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On August 20, 1998, Gerry den Bok, then a book store owner in Burlington, Ontario, tried to reconnect with those who shared the greatest journey of his life. The plans for a reunion with fellow travelers of the August 10, 1948 sailing of the Kota Inten had been publicized, a program had been prepared and a number of responses received. Now in his early eighties, Gerry den Bok still hopes to complete his little, still unfinished project to identify fellow passengers whose picture he took aboard the ship.

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RHENEN, the Netherlands - Memorial services at the Grebbeberg Dutch military honour field will no longer include remembrances for an unknown soldier. Earlier this month, the remains of the only unknown soldier at the cemetery were reburied after its DNA was matched with that of a nephew, who for the past eight years worked tirelessly to solve the mysterious disappearance of his uncle Wim.

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THE HAGUE - Foreign Affairs Minister Uri Rosenthal plans to close nine Dutch embassies as part of an effort to modernize embassy services and re-focus the priorities for Dutch foreign policy. Dutch economic interests will now take centre st...

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PAPENDRECHT - Dredging giant Royal Boskalis Westminster NV plans on investing one billion euros in its fleet. Boskalis is also open to acquisitions which reinforce its position in its industry. They are not at the top of its priority list, ...

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WAGENINGEN – Bicyclists visiting the Netherlands from abroad, especially if they are university students, often have difficulty coping with Dutch roads, the town of Wageningen has discovered. Other road users around the town regularly see e...

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UDEN – The Eastern Brabant town of Uden, which for centuries belonged to the independent entity of Ravenstein, only became part of the Dutch Republic in 1795, the start of its economic decline in the general malaise caused by Napoleon’s eco...

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HELMOND – One of numerous Dutch collectors, museum founder Jan Visser took in old tools and farm implements given him by area farmers. A museum bearing his name since 1983 maintains the collection and preserves rural and agricultural herita...

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FINSTERWOLDE – If the case of Finsterwolde graveyard is any indication, there could be other cemeteries in the Netherlands as well looking for rights’ holders of burial plots. The Groningen village has an additional problem since all its ad...

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VOORST – Dutch master butcher Frits Aalpoel and his team recently captured the Confrerie des Chevaliers trophy by pushing aside their German competitors at the European Butcher Championships. The Aalpoel team from the central Dutch village ...

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UTRECHT, the Netherlands - About 300,000 volunteers devoted over 1,2 million hours during a recent weekend doing chores in their communities all over the Netherlands, in a national voluntarism campaign sponsored by the Oranjefonds (Orange Foundation) and the NLDoet (literally Netherlands Does) network. The 2011 effort aimed to double the 2010 weekend.

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LEIDEN - Abuse of the elderly should receive the same level of attention as child abuse. The problem has increasingly surfaced in recent years and should concern healthcare professionals and legislators.

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SEOUL, South Korea - A new art exhibit, called Korean Rhapsody: A Montage of History and Memory, with 80 historical documents, photographs, artworks and media works, on display in Seoul through June 5, is also drawing attention to an artist born and raised in the Netherlands who was among the first Dutch artists to visit and paint in Korea.

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HILVERSUM – Investigative journalism has turned up a serious problem in Dutch society: the whereabouts of 400,000 people they call phantom citizens. No one seems to be able to trace these people. As a result, the report states, the governme...

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THE HAGUE – Internal Affairs Minister Piet Hein Donner proposes to eliminate the municipal district councils which were introduced in the early 1980s as part of the conglomeration of the Amsterdam and Rotterdam municipalities. It was feared...

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LOS ANGELES - Over one hundred U.S. movie theatres are currently running the Dutch film Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter). The film ran initially at three movie facilities in New York and Los Angeles, netting over $16,000 in one week...

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THE HAGUE – The Dutch have been pushing for European Union budget reform for some time already. They want the EU to restructure the way it receives and spends funds. The Rutte cabinet sent its views on the matter to the Second Chamber recen...

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EDE – Meccano enthusiasts turned out in full force to the first Modelshow Europe, held in the central Dutch town of Ede. Numerous displays featuring scale model cranes, excavation equipment, lorries, and other machines, made of meccano or l...

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HILVERSUM – Changing manufacturing and production systems have rendered nearly all industrial smoke stacks redundant. Most have bitten the dust as a result of skilled demolition crews taking them down on a quiet morning. At one time, the to...

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DEN BOSCH – The cost of maintaining its redundant water tower, even though it was an architectural gem, had become a drain on the municipal budget of the North Brabant capital. Only the insurance and basic annual upkeep extracted 40,000 eur...

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TORONTO, Ontario - Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, has unanimously passed a little known legislative proposal, called bill 166, to “to proclaim May as Dutch Heritage Month”. The act was introduced by Dutch-born and former Ontario deputy premier, Elizabeth Witmer, who continues to serve as the Member of the Provincial Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo. MMPs from all three parties gave glowing reports of the role of the Dutch who have settled in Ontario, which is home to about half of the one million Canadians who now claim Dutch ancestry.

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Flowers and the flowering bulb culture and trade are an integral part of the story of the Dutch, perhaps most vividly demonstrated by making a visit to Keukenhof, a huge but independent garden located in the heartland of the bulb culture known to the Dutch as the 'Bollenstreek.' Although it is not tied to the flowering bulb trade, it amply serves as its show garden. Visitors to Keukenhof cannot help but be awestruck by all aspects of the garden's presentation. Only open for a few brief weeks, Keukenhof was set to open its 2011 season on March 24 and will close again on May 20.

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SASKATOON, Saskatchewan - The Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board handed CLAC a clear victory by dismissing all of the applications by convential labour unions to delay CLAC certifications of bargaining units in the province of Saskatchewan.

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SURAT, India - About 50 graves at the Dutch cemetery at the formerly Dutch colonial trading post in Western India, which were plagued by earthquakes, warfare, tropical downpours and erosion, are nearing the end of their restoration by a specialized Dutch architectural firm. The cemetery is one of a few local reminders of a nearly 130-year Dutch presence which ended in 1744. The Dutch in Surat traded in cotton cloth, yarn and indigo.

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AMERSFOORT - A recent ceremony at the notorious former Amersfoort concentration camp marked the arrival there in 1942 of Dutch anti-Nazi priest and Nijmegen professor Titus Brandsma who had been arrested by the Germans two months earlier af...

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ROTTERDAM - Officials of Port of Rotterdam International have concluded and signed a Port Service Agreement with the northern Tianjin, China-based Nangang Industrial Port Complex. This accord makes the Port of Rotterdam the first foreign po...

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SLIEDRECHT - IHC Merwede, a Dutch builder of highly specialized ships and equipment for dredging and mining activities, and DEME, a Belgian dredging and environmental services group, have entered into a joint venture for deep-sea mining act...

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THE HAGUE – Organizations coming to The Hague’s municipal council for grants have been put on notice not to expect any sympathy for funding requests if they reward managers with pay higher then the so-called JP-norm or balkenende cei...

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INZELL, Germany – Dutch speed skaters have landed thirteen medals between them at the World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships in the German town of Inzell. Bob de Jong took gold in the men's ten kilometre race, overpowering South ...

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SNEEK – The tourism promoting groups (known by their Dutch acronym VVV) of southwestern Friesland, a region famous for its water sport attractions, must merge by the end of this year or loose their municipal funding. The municipality expect...

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MIDDELHARNIS – The decision by a local housing corporation to demolish sixteen houses originally donated by Swedish donors following the disastrous February 1, 1953 Flood, has created quite a stir among the local public. Officials of the ho...

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GENEVA - Volkswagen is resurrecting its iconic microbus, which debuted in 1950 and became a favourite of hippies for its unique styling and copious space for travellers. Volkswagen recently featured a concept version of the van - known by its German nickname, the Bulli - at the Geneva Auto Show.

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SCARBOROUGH, Ontario - Former Dutch-language radio host Jack Brouwer, who in his retirement years continued to broadcast Zingend Geloven, a Christian program, to listeners in the region around Toronto, Ontario, recently died at the age of 88.

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AMSTERDAM - By the time the heritage site preservationist alliance Heemschut was formed in 1911, the Dutch, who since seem to have turned their country into one large open air museum park, nearly demolished the pearl of all historic buildings in the Netherlands, not once but twice: Het Binnenhof at The Hague. The first threat to its existence occurred between 1806 and 1810, during the reign of King Louis Napoleon. The second time, the public rallied to the defense of Het Binnenhof in 1863, scuttling a plan to build a new parliamentary home.

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BRUSSELS – King Albert II, the Belgian monarch, has appointed Wouter Beke, the Flemish Christian democrat leader, as the latest negotiator to try to unblock the political stalemate in Belgium. King Albert has asked Mr Beke to prepare a new ...

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THE HAGUE - The Dutch government deficit came in lower than expected in 2010 at 5.2 percent of gross domestic product, but budget cuts will continue as planned. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says the government plans to cut spending by a ...

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LONDON - Somali piracy is worsening by the week and governments lack the political will to tackle the crisis, which is threatening world trade routes, shipping industry officials say. Shippers have warned that more than 40 percent of the wo...

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GRONINGEN – The skipper of a freight barge lifted his car aboard the vessel recently following errands. Skippers usually reside aboard their inland barges and frequently store their car aboard, lifting them off and onto the deck with a smal...

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ROUVEEN – A former barracks once part of Kamp Conrad, a forced labour site for Jewish men during the German occupation of the Netherlands, has been located at a farm where it had been used as a shed. After World War II the camp was home to ...

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Later this year, on October 6 to be exact, Dutch waterworks enthusiasts have scheduled the fifth annual Sluisdagen, literally the Sluice Days. The event, organized by a foundation created to generate interest in these Dutch landscape features, joins a growing number of special days during which the public is invited to become more acquainted with the subject at hand, be they windmills, pumping stations, castles, historic farmsteads or monuments in general. A surprising range of Dutch surnames owes its origin to this Dutch landscape icon.

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THE HAGUE – Dutch Minister for Immigration and Asylum Affairs Gerd Leers wants to ensure that the Koninklijke Marechaussee (best translated as Royal Constabulary or military police) can continue to carry out mobile controls in the border area with Belgium and Germany.

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EINDHOVEN – Nutrition does make a vast difference in children suffering from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), Dutch researcher Lidy Pelsser has found. She confirmed her exploratory fin...

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KOOTWIJKERBROEK – In spite of all assurances, Dutch agriculture ministry officials and laboratory technicians have utterly failed to convince the Kootwijkerbroek farming community of their course of action in 2001, when the ministry ordered...

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THE HAGUE – Dutch engineers and researchers are convinced they can successfully build and operate a floating greenhouse complex measuring 45,000 square metres (about five hectares). The complex would be built on a styrofoam surface covered ...

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LEERSUM - Dutch soil continues to bare important archeological finds, this time the remnants of an ancient forest at a depth of 29 metres. The layer of fossilized wood measured 20 centimetres thick. Dutch forestry service Staatsbosbeheer fi...

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THE HAGUE - A record number of immigrants settled in the Netherlands last year. A report by the Dutch statistics agency CBS has the number of newcomers at 150,000 people, up 3,000 from 2009. The number of immigrants has risen consistently ...

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LEEUWARDEN - Numerous homes are sagging with walls showing signs of distress and even cracks. The underlying issue is that wooden foundations and piles are suffering from rot because authorities tried to placate unhappy special interests by...

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DELFT - The centuries-old Bagijne tower has been moved a few metres to allow construction crews to build a railway tunnel. Situated in the city centre of Delft, the 280-ton tower was built around the year 1500 and is now a national monument...

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Few family history researchers and genealogists will pick a bone with the civil registry reforms French emperor Napoleon imposed on his occupied realm, of which the Lowlands were a part between 1795 and 1813. For many family history researchers the year 1811 is a demarcation line in history, as in before and after, with labourious research before 1811 making way for increasing clarity in the era that followed it.

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STAPHORST - A Dutch municipality, created through a decree by French emperor Napoleon who merged four smaller entities into a much larger one, wants its former residents to return home for its April 2011 bicentennial birthday celebrations. The 1811 decree merged the villages of Rouveen, Staphorst and IJhorst along with nearby sparsely populated Hasselter schoutambt (a judicial entity) into a municipality, known since 1818 as Staphorst. Except for a few minor changes, Staphorst's borders have remained unchanged, making it an anomaly in Dutch municipal history.

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AMSTERDAM – Private membership based housing corporations, of which there are hundreds throughout the country, have long played a major role in the Dutch housing market, particularly in low cost housing. Many smaller and middle sized corpor...

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THE HAGUE – The annual conference for Dutch ambassadors and consuls-general focused on the question of how to strengthen Dutch economic interests abroad. The gathering of 150 diplomats interacted with 700 entrepreneurs, mostly on a one-on-o...

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HARDENBERG – The number of Dutch municipalities has dwindled significantly through mergers and realignments over the past decades. Some municipalities balked at such imposed measures, aiming to make governance more efficient and cost effect...

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VALTHERMOND – Later this decade, in May 2017, will mark 100 years since a huge peat fire reduced the Drenthe peat town of Valthermond and area largely to ashes, claiming the lives of 17 people. Among the victims of the fire, which took over...

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AMSTERDAM – Two Dutch 2010 Olympic gold medal winners have added another feat to their curriculum vitae now that they have been proclaimed the best individual athletes of the year 2010. The Orange soccer team landed the honour in the team d...

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SASSENHEIM – Local windmill enthusiasts belonging to Stichting Molen van Sassenheim still need 800,000 euros and approval from city council to finally replace the wings of the Speelman, which lost them back in 1882. The wingless structure a...

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VELSEN – A previously abandoned concept is taking the entire country by storm: it is the ‘wijkzuster,’ the community nurse, who drops in on people requiring patient care at home at prescribed intervals and even helps to coordinate volunteer...

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Channeling water has been a challenge for the Lowlands ever since nomadic tribes settled in the river estuaries thousands of years ago. To channel water is easy in one way since it runs to the lowest point. To channel it in a way so it flows where it causes the least trouble is another matter.

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SEATTLE – Cruise ship operator Holland America Line has scheduled two nostalgic trans-Atlantic crossings next summer, following its historic itinerary from Rotterdam to New York City. Originally named Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij, H.A.L. launched its trans-Atlantic service from Rotterdam to New York in 1872. Hundreds of thousands of European immigrants arrived in the United States with H.A.L. ships in the 19th and in the early decades of the 20th century.

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COOPERSTOWN, NY – The Netherlands-born baseball player Rik Aalbert (Bert) Blyleven will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this upcoming summer. Blyleven who hails from the central Dutch city of Zeist, becomes the first Dutch-American player to be so honoured at the Hall of Fame.

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MISSISSAUGA, Ontario - Employees of a retirement facility in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga recently voted unanimously in favour of ending their relationship with SEIU and joining the Christian Labour Association (CLAC). Organizers of the CLAC knew there was unhappiness about a lack of representation and poor service from SEI Union but had not anticipated winning the vote in such a decisive manner.

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HEERENVEEN, the Netherlands - Accell Group has signed an agreement with a specialist in shop software to offer the specialist bike trade in the Benelux countries a modern shop management system, based on the principles of the Digital Cooperation Cycle Sector.

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ROTTERDAM – Troubles caused by volcanic ash clouds and snow, have failed to stem passenger traffic coming through the Rotterdam -The Hague Airport. It welcomed more than one million passengers in 2010.

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THE HAGUE - The former Marks & Spencer building, located in the centre of the city across from the Hema outlet, will soon be demolished to make way for the Nieuwe Haagse Passage. This new arcade will link the Spuistraat with Grote Marktstraat in The Hague’s central s hopping district.

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AMSTERDAM - WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange is being helped by Dutch internet hacker Rop Gonggrijp, U.S. justice authorities say.

In a leaked court order, the U.S. authorities demand all the personal data of the Dutchman, of Assange and of two other alleged WikiLeaks leaders, of U.S. army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, who is in custody pending trial, of Icelandic parliamentarian Brigette Josdottir and of hacker Jacob Appelbaum. The information sought includes IP-addresses, Twitter accounts, Twitter messages and credit card data, home addresses, telephone numbers and bank account numbers.

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THE HAGUE - Dutch entrepreneurs are pleased with the Rutte cabinet. They are giving individual ministers as well as cabinet policies good scores, a new survey by employer organization VNO-NCW indicates.

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DE WIJK – Barrel organs have been part of Dutch street life for centuries. Beautifully decorated and mechanically operated figurines helped generate fascination for the upbeat music producing mobile 'machines' (or should they be called inst...

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ROTTERDAM - The new Dutch coalition government, made up of the conservative liberal VVD and the Christian Democratic CDA is with the support of coalition ‘outsider Wilders’ PVV intent on reforming policies governing ‘coffee shops’ that woul...

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THE HAGUE - The new Dutch cabinet coalition no longer pursues the opening of the Haringvliet floodgates. Opening these major gates connecting the rivers Rhine and Meuse with the North Sea had been agreed upon by previous cabinets, as part o...

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BERGEN OP ZOOM – Owning the oldest hotel in the Netherlands may not attract attention as such, but definitely will if it becomes party to a claim going back hundreds of years. That is the controversy in which Frans Hazen is involved. The ow...

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News images of New York City traffic grinding to a halt during a blizzard and Dutch freeways turning into parking lots during wet snow flurries and freezing rain rarely call up warm sentiments the way other winter photography and the winterscapes by sixteenth and seventeenth Dutch masters do.

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AMSTERDAM - It has been a strange year for trend watcher Vince van Dijk, who packed his suitcase and carted it along each day for an entire year, staying at 350 different hotels in the Dutch capital.

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SCHEVENINGEN - A record number of people took to the freezing cold water for a boisterous but also shivering New Year’s Dip, no doubt cheered on by numerous television viewers across the Netherlands from their comfortable chairs at home. Across the Netherlands, 27,000 diehards braved the freezing temperatures, including about 10,000 who ran into the North Sea at Scheveningen wearing orange woolly hats and gloves handed out by national event sponsor Unox. The rookworst producer also treated participants to hot chocolate and a bowl of Dutch pea soup (snert).

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NEWMARKET – The golf course industry in North America mourns the death of Gordon Cornelis Witteveen, who recently succumbed to complications arising from chronic leukemia at the age of 76. A recent arrival in Canada, he enrolled in the Ontario Agricultural College (now the University of Guelph), and graduated from a program in horticulture in 1958.

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GORINCHEM – Dutch supermarkets are increasingly catering to customers wanting organic food products. The volume of organic food sold by supermarkets has risen sharply, in 2010 up 20 percent in the first nine months over that of the same period in 2009.

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UTRECHT – Giant dairy operation Vreba Melkvee in the Netherlands is not affected by the woes of its sister operation Vreba-Hoff. The USA group, which controlled a group of corporate project entities, lost control of three farms in Michigan ...

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RIJSWIJK – The export volume of Dutch cheese has risen by six percent in the first nine months of 2010 over the same period the year before. The tonnage increased by 24,000 to 431,622 tons of which 360,410 tons remained in the European Unio...

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WAGENINGEN – The entire country will be subjected to another giant photo-shoot, this time by amateur photographers who volunteer for the NL in Beeld-project. The initiator is Stichting Saxifraga, a European network of nature photographers, ...

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VOORBURG, the Netherlands - The public awareness of a past Roman presence in the Netherlands has been fairly general, but has taken a marked upturn in recent years with a number of highly interesting artifact producing excavations, mostly in areas along the Roman Limes. Another very interesting academic 'excavation' was recently revealed with the news of the delivery of a cross-over dissertation at the Free University by researcher Tom Buitendorp, who studied archives for information.

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AMSTERDAM - The financial details of the fiscal year 2009-2010 tabled by Dutch soccer federation KNVB recently are nothing but alarming, showing a combined operational loss of 71,8 million euros for the 18 clubs in the premier league, up from 35 million the year before. Over 2007-2008, the clubs turned a profit of 64 million euros.

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NAALDWIJK - The Naaldwijk flower auction, part of the huge FloraHolland sales and distribution system, the largest of its kind in the world, was picked by U.S. Ambassador Fay Hartog Levin as her acquaintance visit to the province of South Holland.

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EIBERGEN, the Netherlands - Two construction workers who were building an addition to a daycare centre in this eastern Dutch town of Eibergen were surprised to find a swing top beer bottle lodged in the wall. Upon closer inspection, the pair pulled a hand-written memo, dated 1971, from the bottle, stating the name and address of carpenter Tinus Beunk, who had helped build the school.

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NEW YORK - A 2004 assignment in Northwest Iowa has put New York City's Dutch immigrant photographer René Clement on the road to another project he is now wrapping up: Promising Land, a 5 year photography project about the 1870s Dutch immigrants-founded settlement of Orange City, Iowa, and the way it has preserved and nurtured its roots and heritage.

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AMSTERDAM - Sotheby’s recent Amsterdam auction of 19th Century European Paintings, which featured twelve master paintings from the Besselaar Collection, has grossed €2.8 million, well above the antipated €1.5 to 2 million. The collection of its Dutch-American owner represented all the important artists and genres of the Dutch Romantic School and included a panoramic landscape by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, a lively winter scene by Andreas Schelfhout, a flower still life by Arnoldus Bloemers and several town views by Cornelis Springer and Willem Koekkoek.

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ZWOLLE - Members of ChristenUnie (CU), a small Christian party, have told its leader Andre Rouvoet, who served as a minister in the Balkenende cabinet, that in their opinion their party has become too progressive.

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GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan – The new representative of the Netherlands in Western Michigan is another highly successful local entrepreneur with roots in the Netherlands. A former computer programmer, Paulus Heule, who now operates a real estate investment and managing firm, succeeds retiring travel and tour company CEO Henry Witte.

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Canadian soldiers found the terrain in the Lowlands (it is much the same in the western part of Belgium) an extremely huge challenge. The book Terrible Victory by military historian Mark Zuehlke offers a keen insight into the problems the Allies faced as they tried to dislodge tenacious German resistance in the Scheldt estuary.

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WIERINGEN – The former northwestern Dutch island of Wieringen has reached very far back into its history to create something very unique, but also reasonably inexpensive for itself: a walking route ‘In ’t spoor van de Vikingen’ which freely...

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GRONINGEN – Multinational Ikea, which has its roots in Sweden but its head office in the Netherlands, for decades had a small outlet in this northern Dutch city, mainly as a pickup counter for orders. The chain built a much larger outlet in...

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THE HAGUE – The conservative liberal justice and security critic for the VVD, Premier Mark Rutte’s party, received majority backing for his call to abandon the statue of limitations for serious crimes, which in the Netherlands is now twelve...

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UTRECHT - Dutch consumers whipped up a new record getting set for Sinterklaas eve, so reports electronic payments accommodator Equens. The firm released a report stating that the Dutch set a new record on Saturday, November 27, when over a ...

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AMSTERDAM – The World Bank and the global accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) have ranked the Netherlands 27th on their annual Paying Taxes list of 183 countries. Although the Netherlands has risen six spots on the list, PWC does n...

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BRUSSELS – Prince Carlos Xavier, the son of Dutch princess Irene and her former and now late husband prince Carlos Hugo de Bourbon-Parma, tied the knot with Annemarie Gualthérie van Weezel this past summer in a civil ceremony in Wijk bij Du...

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THE HAGUE - A survey among one thousand Dutch speaking people in the Netherlands, Flanders and Surinam has revealed that Dutch speakers prefer to use the language of their host country when abroad during their holidays. A full 50 percent pr...

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HARDERWIJK - Saint Nicholas – Sint Nicolaas or just Sinterklaas to Dutch children – has returned to the Netherlands. He arrived by steam boat in the harbour of the former Zuiderzee city of Harderwijk, located east of Amsterdam. According to tradition, the centuries-old bishop spends the summer months in Spain and travels with a team of Black Peters (Zwarte Pieten to the children) to the Netherlands where they assist him with the distribution of presents on the eve of December the 6th.

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NIJMEGEN - Children with mental disabilities, whose parents are healthy, nearly always show a spontaneous mutation in their DNA. The defect was discovered by scientists at the University Medical Centre Sint Radboud in the southern Dutch city of Nijmegen. The discovery, which now has been published in science journal Nature Genetics, could have huge consequences for diagnosing and preventing mental disability.

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HEERENVEEN, the Netherlands - Dutch bicycle maker giant, the Accell Group, has concluded a deal in which it aquires all outstanding shares in Turkey-based Bianchi Bisiklet A.S., which also includes a 50 percent participation in the well-known Italian company Atala. The acquisition offers Accell Group a strong position in both Turkey and Italy, two attractive markets for bicycles, bicycle parts and accessories. The Heerenveen-based firm will finance its acquisition from its existing credit facilities. It is anticipated that the acquisition will make a positive contribution to earnings per share as of 2011.

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THE HAGUE – The Dutch junior minister of Finance, Frans Weekers, has agreed to review the fairness of his country's taxation policies following a widely supported proposal by Elbert Dijkgraaf, one of the two members in the Second Chamber of...

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WASHINGTON – The Netherlands may be among the top 20 economic powers in the world, but it is not considered to be part of the G20 or of the 24-member board of the International Monetary Fund. In fact, Europe’s joint influence was recently r...

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LUNTEREN - The General Synod of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) has unanimously adopted its pastoral advisory ‘Speaking about God’. The document is the response to a controversial minister who in a book claimed that God does ...

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ZOETERMEER – Production and export statistics do not tell the entire story but still offer a glimpse of the health and welfare of the flowering bulb industry. The export value of bulbs dropped by three percent even though the export volume ...

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NIJMEGEN – Three museums, which dedicate themselves to segment interests of World War Two, are banding together to launch a fourth. The proposed institution will be built in Nijmegen, a nearly 2,000 year old city, which for over six months ...

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WERKENDAM – A house literally built into the dike may have been deemed extra safe from the threat of floods at one time but 33 of them now face demolition because the structures are obstructing plans to reinforce their protective shield. Wi...

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EPE – The idea was to separate bicycle lanes from regular road traffic with a slightly raised round-back barrier, dubbed piggybacks (varkensruggen) by the public. Placed parallel along the bike lanes, the median-type of divider hardly inter...

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THE HAGUE – A number of Dutch water boards – called waterschappen in the Netherlands – are dismayed that funding for ecological corridors has fallen victim to the budget cutbacks announced recently by the incoming Rutte cabinet. A thin stri...

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THE HAGUE - The plan to privatize a small part of the vast holdings of the National Forest Service, known as Staatsbosbeheer, has people in the Hague in an uproar after the agency admitted that high-profile properties such as Malieveld and Haagse Bos could be sold. Staatsbosbeheer which manages 250.000 hectares of land, including nature parks, dunes, wetlands, polders, recreational properties and heritage sites, must offload 15.000 hectares to pare down its budget.

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GARDEN GROVE, California – The Crystal Cathedral, the beleaguered glass mega-church, which broadcasts services in many parts of the world, has been struggling with a messy succession to its founder Dr. Robert Schuller Sr. It recently filed for bankruptcy protection to stave off demands for payments from creditors. The legal move follows months of cutbacks in programming and layoffs of staff.

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JAKARTA - A commentator in one of Indonesia's English-language dailies, the Jakarta Post, says that his country has become a land of tragedies. Right after the tragedy of a flood in Wasior, West Papua, an earthquake-triggered tsunami with three metre high waves hit the Mentawai Islands, off West Sumatra, causing death and destruction.

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EDMONTON, Alberta - The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) accompanied three Alberta government ministers on a tour to Ontario communities recently to help explain the economic and social benefits of developing the controversial Alberta oil sands. The tour was undertaken to address concerns over environmental issues and the efforts being made to minimize any negative impact on the environment.

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TORONTO, Ontario - The Kitchener-Waterloo member of Ontario’s provincial parliament, Schiedam area born Elizabeth Witmer has introduced a Private Members’ Bill in the Ontario Legislative Assembly, called the Dutch Heritage Month Act, 2010.

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Why do so many Dutch people have the syllable kooi in their surname? What’s the story? Of course, North Americans are a long way removed from the roots of it all and may not be aware that the Dutch landscape is dotted with heritage sites, among them many with a kooi. Reminders of these kooi locations are found everywhere, including in the names of farms, roads, fields and, yes, surnames. There are sayings as well in the Dutch language, that have their origin in the kooi culture; sayings, that are regularly heard but really have become disconnected from their roots because their history is not very obvious to most Dutch people now that the kooi culture has all but disappeared. Nearly everyone will know someone with the syllable kooi in a surname but at best will have to guess at its meaning. It has been said that a surname is the archeological evidence of family roots.

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GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan - Over thirty Dutch dairy men, who mostly invested the proceeds of the sales of their farms in the Netherlands to make a fresh start in the United States with immigration consultant and turn-key dairy developer Vreba-Hoff, have returned home embittered, empty handed and destitute, their American dream gone terribly wrong. Vreba-Hoff, the flagship for a group of companies owned and or controlled by two Dutch farming entrepreneurs with operations in the Netherlands and the U.S.A., is itself in deep financial and legal trouble.

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THE HAGUE – Conservative liberal leader Mark Rutte has assumed office as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, the first liberal to lead a Dutch cabinet since 1918. He pledged an era of austerity and tighter regulation of immigration but distanced himself from the anti-Islam philosophy of populist politician Geert Wilders, whose support is vital for the new minority government. Wilders signed a separate accord with the coalition partners but is not a part of the government.

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BASLE, Switzerland - The Netherlands now ranks seventh worldwide in international banking and has overtaken Switzerland. This is the conclusion in a report released by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

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THE HAGUE - The Dutch pay the highest environmental taxes in the world, reports the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Taxes on fuel, energy, waste and other 'green' matters in the Netherlands represent nearly 4.5 percent of its Gross National Product or nearly 27 billion euros in 2008, overtaking Denmark for the top spot. Noteworthy as well is the gap between the Netherlands on the one hand and on the other Germany, Belgium and France, where environmental levies amount to scarcely 2 percent of GNP.

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HAAKSBERGEN – One hundred fifty years ago, the rise of the textile industry, had a huge impact on this eastern Dutch town located near the border with Germany. The chain of events since then, run much like a story line through the schedule ...

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UTRECHT – Former Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has set a new record over all his predecessors: he took the resignations of the highest number of ministers in the period between 1946 and 2009. Up to now, 107 ministers vacated the...

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WAGENINGEN – Sensors in the fields supported by computer technology offer the vegetable growers and greenhouse operators the possibilities to reduce their water requirements by up to 60 percent and fertilizers by approximately 30 percent. T...

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UTRECHT – Secretary-general Dr. A.J. Plaisier of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) has submitted a document, Spreken over God (Speaking about God), to his Synod as a response to a controversial book by Rev. K. Hendrikse of Midd...

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BRUSSELS - Thirteen percent of the territory of the Netherlands is covered by towns, houses, commercial and industrial buildings, roads, railways and other construction. The percentage makes the country the most densely built up country in ...

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KINDERDIJK – The Berger family from Colorado, USA, went home with special memories of their visit to the Dutch Unesco heritage site of Kinderdijk, where they were touring the lineup of windmills with pedal power, the Dutch way. Checking in ...

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HOOFDDORP – A traffic realignment project will relocate the extremely busy N201 artery away from the towns of Aalsmeer and Uithoorn. Part of the project is a one kilometer long tunnel underneath the Ringvaart – the canal around the Haarlemm...

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LEYDEN – The date October 3, 1574 remains etched in the collective consciousness of the citizenry of this country’s historic Dutch city. On that day, the Siege of Leyden ended with the city falling into the hands of the dreaded Spanish troo...

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THE HAGUE – The preparedness of the Dutch citizenry for possible disasters is deemed to be reasonably good. This is the conclusion reached by market researchers who polled the public on behalf of the Internal Affairs ministry. More than fou...

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ELSHOUT – The Brabant village of Elshout has held its final remembrance ceremony for the nearly 50 Allied glider pilots who hid for over a month in Elshout in September 1944. The gliders, part of Operation Market Garden, had landed prematur...

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DRIEBERGEN – Healthy pastures point to abundant life in the soil, Dutch researcher Nick van Eekeren has concluded. One hectare of healthy pasture may support as much as 500 kilograms of earthworms, bacteria and other soil biota he argued in...

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ROTTERDAM – About one thousand onlookers watched the Nieuwe Waterweg storm surge barrier close recently as part of the annual preparedness trials west of the inland port area of Rotterdam. An annual event, the authorities run the trial at t...

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BRUSSELS – The value of net payments to the European Union by member states are a significant issue for Dutch governments. Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands are the largest net contributors, Germany with a net amount of 8 billion euros, ...

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Foreigners are often confused about the Netherlands. This is very understandable. They look for Holland on a good map, cannot find it, and conclude that it is so small that no one can spot it without using magnifying glasses. Of course, while the Netherlands is small, it is still larger than its neighbours Belgium and Luxembourg.

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BRUSSELS - Dutch Gouda and Dutch Edam cheese will receive their protected status under EU rules on local products, a European Commission official confirmed.

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AMSTERDAM – Former police detective A.C. (Appie) Baantjer, who recently passed away just over two weeks short of his 87th birthday, gave millions of readers an inside look into policing and the work of a detective as well as city life in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. His last two books he co-authored with former detective colleague Simon de Waal.

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NEW YORK – The operators of Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport are now the sole owner of Terminal 4 at New York's busy JFK airport. The acquisition is the first one in which a non-U.S.A. firm has taken control of a major U.S.A. airport terminal. Schiphol already owned 40 percent of the terminal's shares. Now, for a further 13 million dollars, it has purchased the remaining 60 percent.

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ELBURG – A local foundation that promotes the IJsselmeer coastal town's fishery heritage, popularly known as the Botterstichting, celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. The botter, a sail fishing vessel type used in nearly all the fishi...

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DE WEERE – The Lakenvelder dairy cattle breed has been a fixture in the Dutch landscape for centuries but has been overtaken by the Friesian Holstein breed so that it is now a rare breed in the Netherlands. While its pure breed registry was...

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ZEIST – Historians who document the story of Islam or the Koran increasingly do so anonymously. They fear publishing their findings under their own name, especially if their writings contain critical elements. Retired professor Pieter van d...

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THE HAGUE – Dutch caretaker cabinet Balkenende has agreed that the Dutch language needs to be enshrined in the constitution as the main language of the Netherlands. The proposed change will include that it is the responsibility of governmen...

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EDE – War historians and local tourism promoters hope to turn the 1940 and 1944-5 battlefields around Rhenen (at the Grebbe defense line) and those centered in the municipalities of Ede, Renkum and Wageningen into a ‘Normandy of the Netherl...

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TILBURG – Injection of bone cement (vertebroplasty) is safe, effective, and at an acceptable cost for patients with acute osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures. Vertebroplasty also gives greater pain relief than regular conservative ...

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ROTTERDAM – The Dutch in China are busy with Expo 2010 and other projects, while the Chinese in the Netherlands are about to launch the year-long centennial celebrations of their arrival in the Netherlands. A foundation is spearheading a bu...

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DEN BOSCH – Former Holland America Line steward John Oudenhuysen considers himself twice lucky. In 1946, at the age of sixteen, he saw a battered Nieuw Amsterdam II, then employed as a troop carrier, return in the Rotterdam harbor. He proved his father wrong for telling him flat out that the chance of landing a job aboard the ship would be next to impossible. The ship was his home for five years. Thanks to his children, he recently enjoyed being a novelty guest on the maiden voyage of the Nieuw Amsterdam IV.

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LONDON, Ontario – John Strybosch, was instrumental in the growth of St. Willibrord Credit Union, now known as Libro, and who served as General Manager for nearly two decades, passed away recently at the age of 87. Earlier this year, he was inducted into the Middlesex County Agricultural Hall of Fame for his work in the agricultural lending field.

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LANGLEY, British Columbia – Enid, the oldest daughter of Willem and Willemijntje (Valkhof) Van Nes, remembers nothing of her family's July 1951 Volendam journey to Canada, but hopes to remove a few question marks from her family's photo album.

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MUMBAI, India – Sources in India suggest that ING may have taken a 'haircut of 17 percent' on its two-and-half-year-old investment in the Kotak Mahindra banking group. ING's withdrawal is yet another instance of a large European bank selling their shares of an Indian lender. The Dutch financial institution sold its entire 3 percent stake in Kotak through a bulk deal for $172.5 million.

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THE HAGUE – Dutch elementary school principal Jan Nowee, who extensively wrote about the life of Arizona cowboy Arendsoog (an alias for white settler Bob Stanhope), his horse Lightfeet, and his helper and native companion Witte Veder (White Feather), was never awarded a prize by his peers for his work. The series, which was continued by Nowee’s son Paul, sold millions of copies in the Netherlands. Arendsoog turned 75 this year.

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It is highly unlikely that Tilting at the Ring will draw huge crowds the world over the way soccer has in recent months. Yet, Tilting is a much older sport, one that also has many more modern variations. Among Dutch sport traditions, Tilting (in Dutch ringsteken or ringrijden) has a 500-year history and is actively practiced throughout the Lowlands.

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AMSTERDAM – The Royal Library (KB) of The Hague and Google Books have agreed they will scan over 160,000 royalty-free Dutch books and open them up for online viewing and research. The project involves about ten percent of KB's extensive co...

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FOCHTELOO – The Friesland and Drenthe border area covering the former penal colony of Veenhuizen and the adjoining Fochteloërveen ought to be designated a World Heritage site. That is the conclusion by the Dutch Forestry Service Staatsbosbe...

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THE HAGUE – The Hoge Raad, the supreme court of the Netherlands has ruled that farmers who leave the country to continue their operation elsewhere are not necessarily quitting their operation, even if they ship their products to another pro...

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RAALTE – There are various annual festivals in the Netherlands that have their roots in agriculture. Raalte, the hub of the rural Overijssel region of Salland, has celebrated its Stoppelhaene since 1951 at the end of August, when the area’s...

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THE HAGUE – Another very well-known Dutch museum is closing its doors for an extended period of time; from 2012 through midway 2014. Originally built as the residence of Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, while he served as governor of ...

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They may not realize it, but all English speakers have numerous words in their vocabulary that may sound like accented Dutch. Among the most frequently used Dutch loan words in North American English is dollar, a word used by Dutch colonial traders and settlers in an era in which transactions frequently were paid by bartering goods and services. Bakery and to snoop also were borrowed from Dutch, permanently it seems.

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OTTAWA, Ontario – Riding bicycles to get around fits Dutch culture and traditions to a T. Using pedal power is good for one's health and, perhaps just as attractive, it cuts expenses and avoids gasoline taxes and consumption taxes.

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THE HAGUE – There is little hope left that the Dutch electorate will be introduced to a new coalition cabinet before Prinsjesdag on the third Tuesday in September, when the caretaker cabinet headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende will present another Speech of the Throne and a new budget. It is expected that caretaker Minister of Finance Jan Kees de Jager will table an austere budget in which the shortfalls of the current 2009-2010 budget will be offset by significant cuts in the new one.

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BRUSSELS - Research by the European Commission shows that the Dutch spend far more on housing than the average citizen in EU member countries.

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STOKKUM/AMSTERDAM – Every tree counts in the Netherlands, a nation which is, with 10.6 percent of its landmass covered with trees, one of the least forested countries in Europe, and even in the entire world (the country's forests are growin...

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TERNEUZEN – The court at Middelburg has ruled that the municipal authorities had shut down Coffeeshop Checkpoint legitimately in July 2008. The shop, which supplied drugs not coffee, was caught with drug quantities weighing 200 kilograms on...

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ARNHEM – Dutch soccer is in plenty of financial trouble. Five clubs in the country’s honour division have been assigned a monitor, another eight in the first division. Seven clubs were penalized with minus points at the start of the season,...

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VIANEN – Dutch developers have discovered a new way of moving housing closer to the country’s freeways: cover them with a glass roof. Researchers have been working at models for greater environment-friendly alternatives to the num...

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THE HAGUE – The Dutch Financial watchdog, De Nederlandsche Bank, has served notice to twelve pension funds that they must quickly put their actuarial and financial house in order. The DNB and Social Affairs minister Piet Hein Donner alerted...

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NIJMEGEN – The imperial city (keizerstad) of Nijmegen, which received its city charter from Roman emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajanus in the year 100 A.D., felt compelled once again to reassert its title as the oldest Dutch city. The discovery o...

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HEERENVEEN /EDE – Two Dutch towns recalled a century of aviation history recently. The central Dutch city of Ede, which already had an airstrip in 1910, beat out the much-publicized July 31, 1910 air show by two days when Dutch East Indies-...

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In an age of global village concepts and intercontinental travel, numerous villages and small towns in the Netherlands are begging rediscovery and integration into both travel itineraries and family history books and journals. Will those whose ancestry can be traced to someplace in the Netherlands fully appreciate the depth of Dutch heritage without an in-depth effort at exploring those roots? Instead of, or in addition to, following paper trails, the country's other trails have much to offer those wanting the visit of a lifetime.

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