Dionne quintuplets

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Mitchell Hepburn with Dionne Quintuplets ca. 1934

The Dionne Quintuplets (born on May 28, 1934) are the first quintuplets known to survive their infancy. The chances of having identical quintuplets are one in 57 million. They were born two months prematurely with the assistance of Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe and two wet nurses.

The five identical sisters are:

Annette
Cécile
Émilie (died August 6, 1954 of an epileptic seizure)
Marie (died February 27, 1970 of a blood clot in the brain in Montreal, Canada)
Yvonne (died June 23, 2001 of cancer)

Their birthplace in Ontario, Canada is the subject of some dispute, as the Dionne farmhouse was in a rural area between two towns. Their birth, however, was registered in nearby Corbeil in northern Ontario, which mother Elzire and father Oliva Dionne considered home. Since the somewhat larger town of Callander reaped most of the commercial benefit, some sources say they were born there. Language politics complicate the issue; Callander is an English town, but Corbeil, like the Dionnes, was largely Franco-Ontarian. Perhaps to resolve the issue, the Dionne Quintuplets Museum is currently located in the nearest city, North Bay.

The custody of the babies was withdrawn from their parents by the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn in 1935. The girls were made the wards of the province and they were put under the guidance of Dr. Dafoe and three other guardians. Ontario housed them in Quintland, a theme park located just across from the parents' home. The sisters could be viewed by visitors through a one-way mirror. Approximately 6,000 people per day visited the park to observe them. In 1934, the quintuplets brought in around $1 million, and they attracted in total about $51 million of tourist revenue to Ontario. The park became Ontario's biggest tourist attraction of the era.

The girls were also used to publicize commercial products such as corn syrup and Quaker Oats and starred in some Hollywood films:

The Country Doctor (1936)
Reunion (1936)
Five of a Kind (1938)
Quintupland (1938)

The quintuplets also performed various stage acts for audiences. In particular, their performance of "There'll Always Be an England" continues to irritate some French-Canadians. After a nine-year court fight between the government and their father, the quintuplets were returned to their family in 1943. Dr. Dafoe died shortly thereafter.

In 1965, they published a book called We Were Five. This account, along with a biography by Pierre Berton, informed a TV movie about them, Million Dollar Babies (1994), produced by CBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and starring Roy Dupuis and Céline Bonnier. The next year, the surviving girls alleged they were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, and that a member of clergy urged them to cope by wearing thick coats. In 1998, the Ontarian government gave the Dionnes a settlement of $4 million CAD.

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