Dionne quintuplets

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Image:Mitchell Hepburn with Dionne Quintuplets.jpg

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 midwives.

The five identical sisters are:

Annette Lillianne Marie Dionne (Allard)
Cécile Marie Emilda Dionne (Langlois)
Emilie Marie Jeanne Dionne (died August 6, 1954 of an epileptic seizure)
Marie Reina Alma Dionne (Houle) (died February 27, 1970 of a blood clot in the brain in Montreal, Canada)
Yvonne Edouilda Marie Dionne (died June 23, 2001 of cancer)

Their birthplace on a farm in tiny, Corbeil, Ontario, was near the larger town of Callander. 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The custody of the babies was withdrawn from their parents by the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn in 1935.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 and tourists through a one-way mirror. Approximately 6,000 people per day visited the park to observe the cute celebrities at play. 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.

At one point their mother, who wasn't allowed to touch them, stood in line with the other paying viewers. Only after a lawsuit was she able to get her children back. None of them grew up normally and they became severely touch-deprived.

The girls were also used to publicize commercial products such as corn syrup and Quaker Oats among thousands of other popular brands 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 to a government-built yellow brick, 20-room mansion that would house the entire Dionne family. All the luxuries in the house were furnished by the quintuplets. Dr. Dafoe died shortly thereafter of pneumonia. By then the girls were torn between wanting to please their estranged family and talking to Dr. Dafoe. He died alone in the hospital having not seen them since before the girls were brought home.

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.