Former Dutch queen Juliana died Saturday at 94 of pneumonia. She is seen here in 1998. (CP Archive/AP/Barbara Walton)

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (CP) – Former queen Juliana, who as a princess spent the war years in Ottawa where she fostered enduring ties with Canada and who later oversaw the postwar dismantling of the centuries-old Dutch empire during a 32-year reign, died Saturday. She was 94.

Juliana, who gave up public life in 1999 due to her weakening condition, died in her sleep of a lung infection at the royal palace in Soestdijk, about 50 kilometres southeast of Amsterdam.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende cancelled foreign travel plans and declared a national day of mourning for the popular monarch he called "a mother to us all."

Several newspapers printed special free editions and national television channels broadcast hour after hour of special coverage.

Balkenende ordered flags on public buildings be flown at half mast until Juliana’s remains are interred at the ancestral burial chamber in Delft. Juliana will lie in state at the palace of Noordeinde in The Hague for several days next week before the funeral, probably on March 31.

"Her personal attention went out to the welfare of people, especially people who . . . couldn’t keep up: people in hospitals, elderly homes, revalidation centres, orphanages. She sought them out countless times," Balkenende said in a televised address to the nation. "By her own words, if she hadn’t been queen, she would have liked to have been a social worker."

Juliana, who gave up the title of queen when she abdicated in favour of her daughter Beatrix in 1980, spent the last decade of her life in seclusion, too ill and mentally feeble to appreciate the adoration of her people.

Like her mother, Beatrix and her sisters share a special tie with Canada.

When the Nazis overran the Netherlands in 1940, the royal family fled to England, where then-queen Wilhelmina set up a government-in-exile with Juliana’s German-born husband, Bernhard, as her aide-de-camp.

Juliana moved to Canada and lived in Ottawa with her children, including Beatrix, then a baby. Juliana gave birth to another daughter, Margriet at Ottawa Civic Hospital. The Canadian government declared the delivery room part of the Netherlands so the girl would be born a Dutch citizen.

As a tribute to Canada, the people of Holland presented Ottawa with a gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs in 1945 in appreciation for the safe haven given the royal family and for Canada’s role in the liberation of the Netherlands. Juliana sent a personal gift of 20,000 tulip bulbs, the start of a lifetime annual bequest.

Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson issued a release that recalled the strong ties between Canada and the Netherlands fostered by Juliana, concluding: "Our admiration for Princess Juliana and the Dutch people has never faltered and it never will."

Juliana will be widely remembered in her homeland for her dislike of royal protocol, which put her on the same level as her followers. Archive film footage aired on Dutch television showed her being lowered into the depths of a coal mine and walking in boots after the traumatic 1953 floods which killed 1,835 people.

Several hundred well-wishers travelled to the remote Soestdijk palace to pay respects or lay flowers, and hundreds more posted messages on Internet condolence registers.

One man, Jan Anne Bos, said he felt that Juliana was "his queen" since he was born in 1941. He remembered Juliana and Bernhard bicycling unaccompanied during a visit to his town near the German border. He said Juliana’s religious belief connected her with everyday people.

"She knew how to do that so well," he said.

Condolences came from Queen Elizabeth, whose spokesman said she was "saddened" by the news, and South African President Thabo Mbeki.

In addition to Bernhard, Juliana is survived by her four daughters; Queen Beatrix, Princesses Irene, Margriet and Christina; 14 grandchildren, including Crown Prince Willem-Alexander; and seven great-grandchildren, including Willem-Alexander’s daughter Catharina Amalia, who was born in December and is second in line for the throne after her father.

Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina, Princess of Orange-Nassau, was 39 when she took the throne on Sept. 4, 1948.

Through her more modern, down-to-earth ways, she brought the monarchy closer to the people than under her mother, who had stepped down after a reign of 50 years. Juliana was known to pour the tea herself for her visitors.

Even after she abdicated, the Dutch continued to celebrate their national holiday on her birthday rather than that of the reigning Queen Beatrix, partly out of respect for the queen mother and partly because her spring birthday was more suitable for outdoor celebrations.

During the turbulent 1960s, she watched the youthful social unrest that decades later evolved into such landmark legislation as legalized homosexual marriages, prostitution and euthanasia.

One year after coming to the throne, Juliana oversaw a watershed in Dutch history: the recognition of an independent Indonesia. Her proclamation officially ended 346 years of colonial rule in the former Dutch East Indies, from which great wealth had flowed to the Netherlands for generations.

After the war, Juliana was a symbol of strength in the difficult period of postwar reconstruction after years of Nazi occupation.

In 1954 she gave her assent to the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which formed the basis for co-operation with the remaining colonies of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. With the queen’s signature on the act of parliament, Suriname became an independent in 1975.