The two surviving Dionne quintuplets are adding their voices to a bid to save the Dionne Quints Museum in North Bay, Ontario.
Housed in the log cabin where the five “miracle babies” were born in 1934, which was moved to North Bay in the 1960s from its original site near Callander, the museum closed last year.
The town is interested in redeveloping the site and is exploring options for the museum, whose attendance has declined in recent years.
“We decided to give a helping hand,” said Cécile Dionne.
“It’s part of our heritage.”
1936: The home where the Dionne quintuplets were born in 1934, in Callander, Ont. It was later moved to North Bay.
May 28, 1936: The second birthday of the Dionne quintuplets, left to right: Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie and Marie.
A local resident, Jeff Fournier, has started a petition asking the town to move the museum to another site and designate it as a heritage site. It had 655 signatures as of Friday evening.
Between 1934 and 1943, close to 3 million people visited “Quintland” — the hospital complex built for the youngsters when they were taken from their parents at four months of age. No admission was charged but journalist and author Pierre Berton estimated in his 1977 book The Dionne Years that at their peak during the Depression, the Dionnes represented a $500-million tourism asset.
1936: Part of the crowd entering the recently completed playhouse of the Dionne quintuplets to watch the famous babies at play on a recently busy day for visitors.
Cécile and Annette Dionne said they do not feel an emotional connection to the farmhouse, since they were infants when they moved out.
If left with their parents in the family homestead, which had no electricity or running water, “I think we would have died,” Cécile said.
A postcard shows the Dionne quintuplets playing in the viewing area at Quintland.
Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe kept the babies alive with country doctor skills and telephone advice from his brother William, a Toronto gynecologist. Dafoe was later made joint guardian of the quintuplets.
1940: The Dionne quintuplets have a tea party in the nursery at Quintland. The sisters were placed on a strict diet to keep from gaining weight.
Cécile and Annette have fond memories of the nursery where they were raised until age 9 1/2, unaware that hordes of tourists were gawking at them.
Their memories of the years after their parents regained custody of them in 1943 are painful, including sexual, physical and verbal abuse, they said.
1949: Dionne family portrait.
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