IT’S A GIRL, GIRL, GIRL, GIRL, GIRL!
The amazing saga of the Dionne quintuplets.
BATTLING HARD ODDS FROM START
At the height of the Great Depression on May 28, 1934, in Corbeil, Ontario, the first quintuplets who would survive past infancy were born. When Yvonne, Cecille, Annette, Emilie, and Marie were born, their survival was in question. Collectively, the Dionne girls weighed only 6 kilograms (13 pounds, 5 ounces). An adult could hold one in the palm of his hand. They were kept warm near the family stove, and they lived the first month of their lives in incubators. Local women donated their breast milk to help feed them. Doctors fed the girls diluted rum to help their tiny lungs so they could breathe more easily. Scientists gave the quints a less than 1 in 57 million chance of surviving. But when it was clear that the five would make it, people began calling them “the miracle babies.” The five identical girls lifted the spirits of many who were struggling through the difficult economic time of the Depression, and the Dionne girls became a worldwide media sensation—a symbol of joy, hope, and strength.
A COMPLCIATED CUSTODY BATTLE
The Dionne parents (Olivia and Elzire) were poor, and days after the birth of the girls, the parents were made a financial offer by Chicago’s Century of Progress exhibition. The parents agreed, but the contract was revoked. The Ontario government called into question the parents’ ability to care for their children. So four months after their birth, the quintuplets were taken away from their parents by the Ontario government. The parents were declared unfit to care for their children, who became wards of the provincial Crown. Olivia, the mother, remained part of their guardianship, but the girls were put under the protection of Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, who successfully delivered the girls, and two other guardians.
The government insisted that they were taking the children away from the parents in the interest of the children’s well-being. However, many suspect that they had ulterior motives. The Canadian government was fully aware of the growing public interest in the quintuplets, and it didn’t take long for them to build a tourist industry centered around the girls. The girls lived in a hospital especially built for them near their home. That hospital became a tourist trap called Quintland.
LG2, the world’s largest underground hydroelectric power plant is in the Baie-James region of Quebec.
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
Between 1934 and 1943, about three million people queued up at Quintland to get a peek at the quints and see where they lived. When they were babies, nurses would stand on a balcony and hold up the babies so the gawkers could have a glimpse. Although some saw their upbringing as privileged because they had round-the-clock nursing, a swimming pool, and a playground to themselves, their world was surrounded with glass that allowed visitors to view them three times a day. The girls couldn’t see the visitors because the glass was covered with fine-mesh screens on the inside. It was as if they were growing up in a human zoo.
The girls, always in their matching outfits, became a bigger attraction than Niagara Falls, and it’s estimated that local businesses earned an estimated half-billion dollars from visitors. The parents, however, were made unwelcome, and they were rarely allowed to visit their own children.
LUCRATIVE LITTLE GIRLS
The quintuplets kept Ontario from going bankrupt. The government didn’t charge tourists for parking or admission to Quintland hospital, but a store there raked in an estimated $350 million for the province. Souvenirs such as postcards, dishes, and Dionne dolls brought in a steady revenue stream. People gathered stones from the family farm and opened souvenir stands where the rocks were sold as fertility stones for 50 cents each. Even the quintuplet’s father sold fertility stones to make a buck. The Ontario government sold photos of the quintuplets to publications at every major holiday—carving pumpkins for Halloween or sitting on Santa’s lap.
Dr. W. E. Blat headed the team from St. George’s School for Child Study at the University of Toronto who studied the girls. They X-rayed them and recorded their episodes of “anger and fear,” tantrums, naps, and squabbles. They even catalogued what the girls ate.
In an interview with London’s The Independent, Cecille Dionne said, “It wasn’t human. It was a circus.” She said she knew the word doctor before she knew the word mother. The nurses became their mothers, and the attending physician, Allan Roy Dafoe, their father. They made three movies for Twentieth Century Fox, and they made profitable endorsements for products from cod liver oil to typewriters to automobiles. The Alexander Company manufactured dolls that looked like the girls. The quints were used to hawk Quaker Oats, Palmolive liquid detergent, Bee Hive golden syrup, toothpaste, and war bonds. The money apparently went to the parents, but the girls themselves weren’t seeing much of it. When the girls were 7, only $1 million had been put in their trust fund. By the time they turned 21 and became eligible to receive the funds, only $800,000 remained.
Canadian tattoo artist, Vivian “Sailor Joe” Simmons, had 4,831 tattoos on his body.
THE GRASS ISN’T ALWAYS GREEENER…
After nine years of a bitter custody fight, the daughters were allowed to move back in with their parents and their other nine siblings. But apparently life back home was no picnic. They later wrote that life with their parents was “the saddest home we ever knew.” As crazy as Quintland was, it was more pleasant than their real home. They declared that their mother was unloving and their father was a controlling tyrant. Later in life, the three sisters said their father abused them in the car. Later, each of the girls confessed that they longed to have been born separately.
They wrote, “Who could ever count the times we heard, ‘We were better off before you were born, and we’d be better off without you now?’” The sisters said that they were asked to do more chores than the couple’s other children and served the rest of the family their meals. At age 18, the girls all left home and struck out on their own as adults. But the girls said their sheltered life made it difficult for them to adjust to the real world.
CALLED TO TRIAL
Emilie became a nun and died of a seizure in 1954, and Marie died of a blood clot in 1970. When the three surviving sisters, Annette, Cecile, and Yvonne, reached their sixties, they were living together outside Montreal on a combined income of $746 a month. In 1998 the sisters successfully sued the government for separating them from their parents. The women asked to be compensated for the trust fund money that had been lost or taken. The government’s first offer was to give the sisters $4,200 a month, but after public outcry, the sisters and the Canadian government reached a settlement of $2.8 million. Ontario Premier Mike Harris traveled to the three remaining sisters to make a formal apology and deliver the monetary settlement. Yvonne died in 2001, leaving behind Cecile and Annette.
NBC President Brandon Tartikoff didn’t initially like Canadian actor Michael J. Fox He couldn’t see his face looking good on a lunch box.