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In 1934, a woman named Elzire Dionne was pregnant in Ontario. She was 25. She and her husband, Oliva, lived on a
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farm and already had five children. And now, she thought, she might be having twins.
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She was due in July. >> [music] >> On May 28th, she went into labor very early in the morning.
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Her aunt came to the house. She'd helped deliver Elzire's babies before. >> [music]
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>> Auntie Legros comes and sees that things just don't seem right. Elzire doesn't
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She's just not well, and she's frightened. Author Sarah Miller. >> [music] >> And so, they call the local midwife, and
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the two midwives deliver one, then two, and then, in shock, three baby girls. In
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the meantime, they have also had [music] Oliva go for the doctor. Go get Dr. Dafoe.
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So, the doctor arrives just as the third baby is delivered, and he scrubs up, and
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he assists in the delivery of two more infants. How big are these babies? They're so
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tiny. They [music] are All five of them together weigh under 14 lb. The doctor, Allan Roy Dafoe,
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had helped deliver a set of quadruplets 26 years earlier, but none of them had lived more than a
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week. There were no records of any quintuplets anywhere in the world that had survived
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longer than 50 days. He then looked at the babies and made a statement to the midwives,
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"They're not going to be alive come daylight. I'm going home." Brian Callaghan, Elzire and Oliva's
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grandson. As Dr. Dafoe was leaving, Oliva's brother, Leon, arrived. The doctor told Leon about the five babies.
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He actually called the newspaper in North Bay called the North Bay Nugget and inquired about
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placing a birth notice in the newspaper. And he asked if a notice for five babies
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would cost more than just a regular notice for one baby. The editor thinks it's a joke. He's
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like, "Leon, you're you're kidding me. Come on." And he says, "No." You know, his
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sister-in-law has just given birth to five little girls, and the editor says, "It It's free. We're going to print this
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one for nothing." That morning, about 6 hours after the birth, a reporter and photographer from
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the North Bay Nugget arrived at the Dionnes' house. Elzire's aunt let them inside to take a
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picture. It was a picture of my grandmother laying in bed with the five babies right
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beside her. And at the time that picture was uh put on by telegram and sent all over the world.
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The babies were identical. At first, they were just labeled A, B, C, D, and E, but within a few days, they had names:
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Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie. The smallest baby was 2 lb 4 oz. Everyone was concerned for all of them,
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but Marie's existence was by far the most precarious because she was just so little. So, initially, like, they're
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putting opening the oven door and putting a basket on the door and putting the babies in this basket in front of
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the open oven because they need to be kept warm. Um you know, hot water bottles pinned to the sides of the
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basket because they they need an incubator, but there is no such thing within hundreds of miles.
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Dr. Dafoe drove to the Red Cross to get more help. That evening, they sent a 21-year-old
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nurse named Yvonne Leroux. She stayed up through the night with the quintuplets.
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The next day, at 5:30 a.m., Dr. Dafoe got a phone call from a newspaper editor in Chicago asking if the babies were
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still alive. Then a journalist from New York called. Then a doctor, a health commissioner in
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Chicago, who said he was an expert on premature babies. He asked Dr. Dafoe what he needed.
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Elzire Dionne had actually had trouble nursing her singly born babies. Her milk supply was was not that high.
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And so, they have to improvise. What are they going to feed these these babies if
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they keep living? Um and at first, it's just water. And then, he comes up with this improvised
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formula of cow's milk and corn syrup. But there are these really frightening spells when they start to turn blue, and
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you know, they're not getting enough oxygen is what the real issue is. But he concocts another little formula with
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diluted rum, which he's instructing the midwives and nurses to give them to bring them back.
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The doctor in Chicago said he would send frozen breast milk. And he said that the babies needed to be
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kept at 85° with an incubator. But the Dionnes didn't have any electricity. Chicago newspaper sends one of its
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reporters with an incubator. They find an incubator that does not need electricity, very old-fashioned model.
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They had to go into the the basement or the attic of this medical supply warehouse in Chicago, and this fellow
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called Charlie Blake >> [music] >> gets on a train with this incubator and speeds north with it.
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A reporter and photographer from the Toronto Star brought a car full of supplies and gifts when they came to
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take pictures of the babies. To everyone's astonishment, they just keep living. I mean, they say that in the
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newspapers over and over again. They're still breathing. They're still living. People, that's such a basic thing to
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say, but it is so unheard of. It has never happened in 400 years of recorded medical history. Dr. Dafoe famously
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said, you know, if somebody asked him, "What do they look like?" He said, "Like rats." One of the reporters said that
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you would almost swear they're transparent when he saw one of them lifted up like for a bath or diaper
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change. There's a picture of Nurse Leroux holding one of the girls, and that baby's entire torso is
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contained in her palm. The day after the babies were born, the Toronto Star printed three pictures of
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the Dionne family. The article read, "Have good chance of surviving, states quintuplets doctor."
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Mr. and Mrs. Dionne don't fare as well with the press. So, Mr. Dionne in particular, um but even Mrs. Dionne is
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the very morning of the birth, when she first talks to her husband about what's just happened to them, she says, "What
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will people think? They'll They'll think we're pigs." And that's kind of in reference to
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sh >> [sighs] >> There's not a great way to put it. She feels like people are going to think
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she's had a litter of babies, and that that's somehow vulgar. And Mr. Dionne, when he's first
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confronted with the press, they ask him, "Well, do you feel proud of yourself?" And something about the tone or the
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manner of that question got right under his skin immediately. And what he swore to his dying day that
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he said was, "You You talk like I should be put in jail." But what they reported him as saying
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was, "I'm the type of fellow that should be put in jail." As if he was indeed ashamed of having fathered so many
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children at once. And that encounter would taint his view of the press for the rest of his life.
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The next day, May 30th, the Toronto Star reported that Oliva had agreed to take the quintuplets to the World's Fair in
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Chicago. A promoter had reached out to him about a deal to put the quintuplets on display
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there. When the World's Fair calls and says, "Hey, we we want your babies," they are
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offering solutions to so many problems that just arose so suddenly, such as who's footing the bill? Nobody has
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really talked about who's paying the nurses, who's paying the doctor, who's paying for these shipments of breast
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milk that come every day. Their family literally doubled overnight. They had five children on May 27th. They had 10
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children on May 28th. And the folks at the World's Fair say, "If you bring your babies here, we will
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give them the best care that is medically available in the city of Chicago. We will pay your expenses We
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will travel expenses. We will pay your living expenses for yourself, your wife, all of your children."
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They said they would also pay for the babies' medical care for up to 6 weeks before coming to the fair.
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Oliva went to ask their local priest for advice. They drove south so they could meet the
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promoter and to review the contract. He wanted a provision added saying if the children weren't well enough to travel,
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that the you know, the contract was off. The promoter said, "Okay." And Oliva signed the contract.
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When he arrived home, there were even more cameras and journalists waiting outside.
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Some had dressed as nuns coming to pray for the babies in an attempt to get inside.
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Oliva refused to talk to them or be filmed. The World's Fair promoter announced that
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they'd signed a contract, and newspapers reported exactly how much money Oliva would make from exhibiting the
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quintuplets. $250 a week and over 20% of ticket sales. Within about 24 hours, Oliva Dionne
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begins to regret signing that contract. Um I think in part because of the way people reacted.
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They think he's putting his daughters up for sale, more or less. The Cleveland Press reported that Dr.
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Dafoe did not agree with the decision Oliva had made. Quote, "As long as I am boss, there'll
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be no trip anywhere for these babies. The father can go if he wants to, but not the children."
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It appears publicly that Dr. Dafoe and Oliva Dionne are going head-to-head as if
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Mr. Dionne wants to take the children to Chicago and Dr. Dafoe is sort of like putting himself in front of the
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incubator and saying, "No, no. I No, I won't let you do this." When in fact it was Oliva Dionne's insistence on putting
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that clause into the contract that gave Dr. Dafoe the power to say, "We're not moving these babies yet."
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Oliva started trying to get out of the Chicago contract. He refused to cash checks from the
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promoter. He said the contract didn't mean anything because Elzire hadn't signed
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it, too. But the promoter said it was legally binding. The government comes up with this plan
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to protect the babies from being sent to Chicago, which is if the Dionnes will sign custody of
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those five children to the Red Cross, they will be protected. Because Oliva Dionne is still bound by
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that contract he signed, but the Red Cross is not. So, if they transfer custody,
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the children are protected. And so, with great reluctance, but with no other way around it,
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Oliva and Elzire sign a different, a brand new contract. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
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We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. >> [music] >> In July of 1934,
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Elzire and Oliva Dionne signed a contract which would give the Red Cross guardianship of the quintuplets for 2
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years. The Red Cross would pay for the nurses and milk shipments. They began building a special hospital
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for the quintuplets across the street from the Dionnes' house. While they were waiting for the hospital
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to be done, a nurse partitioned off the parlor of the house for the quintuplets.
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Dr. Dafoe was so worried about the babies getting sick that he barely allowed anyone besides the nurses
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inside. The parents are left just sort of feeling like almost like aliens in their
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own home. And Elzire after that birth is not well for several days, if not weeks.
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So, she's so distressed by her separation from her newborn daughters that uh Grandpa Dionne cuts a hole in
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the wall. He makes a little window so that she can look through from her bed and see into the babies' room.
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Construction on the new hospital began in August. People are literally sending nickels to
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Northern Ontario to help build the hospital for these babies. Um one little girl from Rhode Island
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sent a nickel and said, "Well, I wish I could send more, but Daddy only works 3 days a week to keep us five going, so
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that's >> [music] >> all they could spare, but they wanted to send all they could spare."
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In late September, [music] when the quintuplets were just under 4 months old, Dr. Dafoe and the nurses moved the
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babies to the finished hospital. It was billed as this sort of infant utopia because everything was going to
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be modern and new and just for them and the best of everything. There were chimes that were rung at these certain
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hours for meals, for playtime, even for like there was six designated potty times during the day. There was this
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sort of aura around the science of child-rearing and it was presented to the public as though
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these children were going to have the best possible upbringing because we're going to have
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the latest in everything scientifically, psychologically. It's all It's all going to be here for
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them and we are going to make these children the most perfect children you ever saw.
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Elzire and Oliva were allowed to visit at any time as long as no one in their house was sick. The official policy is
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anytime you want, they're your children. Come on in. But the the logistics and everything
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just make it feel very strange to the Dionnes. Who walks across the street to see their
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children? There's a fence with barbed wire and they had to like ring a bell and wait
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for the guards to let them in. Once they're past those gates, they are always under the nurses' gaze. And Elzire in
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particular felt very much like she was treated like a criminal, like she couldn't be trusted with her own
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children. Crowds of people had started driving to the hospital to see the quintuplets.
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But they would also gather around the Dionnes' house. Once a man broke their kitchen window
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and reached inside. In February of 1935, things have calmed down a bit. There's been some health scares with the babies
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that have passed and things are seeming fairly stable. And once again, it dawns on Oliva Dionne,
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"Okay, in 2 years, these five children are are going to come home. Well, then what?
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We still have the same house. He still has the same job. That's more than he can financially stretch
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to." And so, for that reason, the Dionnes explain, they go on a vaudeville tour in the
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United States in February of 1935. A theater agent from Chicago had proposed the idea to them for $1,700 a
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week. It was basically just displaying themselves. All they did, >> [music] >> in essence, was say, "You know, we thank
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you for your attention. We thank you for all of your care and your prayers and your donations." And Mr. Dionne said two
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or three sentences in English. And Mrs. Dionne said, "Thank you very much and may God bless you." in French because
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that was her native language. And that was it. Audiences loved it. But newspapers published jokes making
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fun of the Dionnes. They called Oliva a quote "little shrimp" and the tour a flop.
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The premier of Ontario called it "nauseating to Canadians, revolting and cheap."
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We're trying to save these children from exploitation. We gave them a beautiful hospital. The [music] Red Cross is
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taking care of them. And now look at what their parents are doing. They're out exploiting and exposing themselves
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for money. In March, the Ontario legislature proposed a new bill about the Dionne
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quintuplets. The legislature proposes taking, forcibly seizing control and custody of Yvonne,
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Annette, Cecile, Emilie, and Marie, making them wards of the crown until they're 18 years old to save them from
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the exploitation that now people seem to believe um they will suffer at the hands
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of their own parents. Are they allowed to do that? Uh they did it. >> [laughter]
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>> It caused a great deal of debate in the legislature, but ultimately, the Dionnes' five daughters became wards of
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the crown. It was called the Dionne Quintuplet Guardianship Act and it made the Minister of Public Welfare the
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quintuplets' special guardian along with a board appointed by the government. The Minister said, "These children are
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our own royal family. We want to make it possible for them to lead normal lives."
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When the bill passed, Elzire and Oliva packed bags and tried to move into the hospital in protest,
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but a police officer showed up and after 2 hours, they went home. They said over and over again,
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"We're raising these five other children. Nobody has has complained about them."
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And they they characterized it as kidnapping. The quintuplets were 9 months old.
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That spring, Dr. Dafoe had started letting some visitors inside the hospital between 2:00 and 3:00 in the
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afternoon to look through a window into the nursery. It turns out that that that gazing
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through the windows kind of seems to make the babies nervous. And so, they change tactics and start
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displaying the the children on the front porch of of the nursery at set times during the day. They would put out a
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placard that said, "Yvonne." And one of the nurses would come out and hold up Yvonne. And the people lined up at the
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fence would just cheer and fuss. And because they were identical, they could dupe the public. So, if Cecile was
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having a rough time, they could just show Emilie twice. Just change the sign, change the nurse, bring out the same
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baby, and at that distance, no one was any the wiser. Are they being charged? No.
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No, it's always free, of course, because the government the government can't exploit these children, and money equals
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exploitation. So, there is no charge. Journalists and psychologists debated whether the public should be allowed to
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view the quintuplets. A well-known psychologist wrote in Cosmopolitan, "Life in a glass house is not conducive
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to normal human development. Babies are not fishes." But then he recommended they be
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separated and raised by different families. Quote, "to make them forget they are
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quintuplets." A judge on the quintuplets guardianship board said, "These children are the treasures of the
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world. Why should they not be seen?" They said, "Well, people are going to come no matter what, and the more we try
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to thwart them, the more obnoxious they're going to become. So, we need to do it on our terms."
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And that's the tactic that they took. And what did they do? They built an observatory,
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a horseshoe-shaped building, and in the center of the horseshoe is a playground.
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So, you enter, if you're a member of the public who wants to see the Dionne quintuplets at play, you enter through
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sort of the bottom of the U in that horseshoe, and you file in one of two directions, and there are these windows
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that allegedly are one-way. They've put these screens that are painted white over the windows. So, the theory is you
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can look out into the playground at the children, but they can't see you. And the the observatory is lined with
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cork and felt to muffle sounds. People are admonished not to speak and stuff, but
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they do cuz they just can't help themselves. They are not to take pictures. They are just to file in an
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orderly fashion through this, you know, whatever leg of the horseshoe you choose, and you can go through that
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observatory as many times as you please during the observation period, but traffic must be kept in motion at all
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times. You're not to linger. So, the children um the policy states, health and weather permitting, are
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herded into their little private playground, and are stared at for twice a day, every day.
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The observatory opened on July 1st, 1936, just after the babies' second birthday.
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How do they seem to react to this attention? There are mixed accounts. There are some
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nurses who claim that the children were completely oblivious, and there are others who are like, "That's nonsense,
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because they observed the girls even you know, after the public had left, if the
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children were given access to those windows, they would take their building blocks and and sort of climb up to the
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windows and wave at nobody. They knew people were in there looking at them, and they would perform. Emilie took
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particular delight in climbing the jungle gym and may you know, looking precarious and and making people gasp
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and wonder if she was going to fall. And there were times when it it did some nurses said it it seemed to disturb
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them. They seemed to not want to be there." Between 3 and 6,000 people came every
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day to see the quintuplets. Outside the gates of the hospital, all kinds of tents and stands had started
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popping up to sell things to tourists. Newspapers called it Quintland. Elzire's aunt was the first one to open
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a tent. She sold food, she sold souvenirs, she she told her story, offered autographs.
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The two midwives um wrote a little pamphlet describing the births and the family and everything that they would
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sign. Oliva opened a booth, too. He sold photographs, postcards, and autographs for a quarter.
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In 1937, the Dionne quintuplets were a more popular tourist attraction than Niagara Falls.
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Businesses are booming because these folks, again, that have come so far to see the famous Dionne quintuplets,
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they need other stuff to do. If they've come that far, well, you might as well offer them hotels and restaurants and
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fishing excursions, and the girls' uncle Leon ran a gas station, and he installed
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five gas pumps and put Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, and Marie's name each had was assigned to a gas pump.
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And also, critically, it will come out later, the province is pocketing all kinds of money because
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they are charging a higher gas tax than any other province in Canada, because they can, because people are
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going to pay it, because they want to see the Dionne quintuplets. And when you've got to drive a couple hundred
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miles north of Toronto, that adds up. Newspapers paid thousands of dollars for exclusive rights to photograph the
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quintuplets. And Hollywood producers made a deal to shoot three movies in their nursery.
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The Madame Alexander Doll Company made sets of five identical dolls named after the quintuplets.
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Companies used their photos in advertisements. Doctor Dafoe gave endorsements. Products like Karo syrup, Palmolive
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soap, Colgate toothpaste, Baby Ruth candy, anything Doctor Dafoe said was the best
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for the Dionne quintuplets was perceived as the best for anybody, and he was paid
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for that. His influence was so great that at that time, there was some hesitation toward things like
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pasteurization of milk and vaccinations. And when Doctor Dafoe comes out and says, "Pasteurized milk is best for your
00:26:06
child. Vaccinations are best for your child." That has a great effect on public health. So,
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milk-borne illnesses decrease markedly, as do a lot of childhood diseases that people, you know, who had been wary
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about vaccinating their children, when they hear that the Dionnes are vaccinated and they see the pictures of
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the Dionnes being inoculated in the papers, they say, "Okay, if if the Dionne quintuplets are receiving this, then I'm
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going to trust that and that it's best for my child, as well." In 1937, Doctor Dafoe said,
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"There isn't any point in bringing them up as normal children. They must learn to be looked at, talked
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about, and studied without losing their sense of proportion or their ability to enjoy life.
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And because they will always have to buy their privacy and pay dearly for it, we
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are trying to build up sufficient funds to make it possible for them to have peace and freedom as the years go by."
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The money from the photographs and advertisements went into a trust fund for the quintuplets, managed by the
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guardianship board. Oliva was a member of the board, but he stopped attending meetings
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[music] when he kept being outvoted. Elzire was worried the quintuplets weren't getting enough [music] to eat.
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She fought with the nurses. When a nurse left her job at the hospital and the quintuplets would cry,
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they remembered Elzire would get angry. The nurses are put in this position where
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they are the children's parents in [music] practice. They're never supposed to speak sharply.
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They're never supposed [music] to physically discipline the children. But on the other side of that is they're not
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supposed to hug and kiss them, either. So, for instance, when they're put to bed at night, it's you're put in your
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crib and it's lights out. There's no toys. >> [music] >> There's no singing. There's no rocking
00:28:10
chair. There's none of that kind of routine. Twice a day, the quintuplets had their
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hair curled. Researchers visited to analyze their physical similarities, their handprints and eyelids, and their
00:28:24
personalities. It was reported Doctor Dafoe had them on a special diet to, quote, "keep them
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from growing too fast." On holidays like Halloween and Valentine's Day, they did special photo
00:28:39
shoots. Their birthday parties were filmed. Later, Cecile said, "The gifts were all empty boxes.
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The cake was a big hole. It was always like that. There was no cake at all when we cut
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it." The quintuplets were allowed to leave the hospital for the first time when they were about 5 years old
00:29:03
to meet Queen Elizabeth in Toronto. By 1940, Oliva had filed two lawsuits against Doctor Dafoe.
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He demanded that Doctor Dafoe reveal how much he was making from advertising contracts
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and put his profits in the trust fund. Doctor Dafoe resigned from the guardianship board, and Oliva withdrew
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the lawsuits. By then, World War II had begun, and fewer Americans were making trips to
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Quintland. And the way that journalists wrote about the quintuplets was changing.
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As the girls grew up, they became There's There's not a nice way to say it. They weren't as cute as they used to
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be. They got to be perfectly ordinary-looking little girls. And that didn't have the same draw
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as these adorable little ringleted toddlers. A nurse who had taken care of them as
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babies came to visit them at Quintland in 1942 when the quintuplets were seven and told a reporter,
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"I was disappointed in them. I thought they were not as pretty." Another former nurse spoke up saying she
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felt sorry for the quintuplets. The tide of public sympathy starts to turn toward Mr. and Mrs. Dionne and away
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from the doctor. Dr. Dafoe had been diagnosed with colon cancer and went away for surgery.
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And it's like 6 months or so. It's It's quite some time before they see him again.
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And in that intervening period, they've realized that the expectation is to love their parents.
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They can feel that expectation from their parents now. And so, when Dafoe returns from his
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recovery, the feeling between them is very, very different. One nurse said, "They just wouldn't go near him. We
00:31:02
literally had to push them." Later, the quintuplets said, "We were old enough to know that mom and
00:31:10
dad did not want us to do that. We were anxious to please." Then Dr. Dafoe died of pneumonia.
00:31:19
>> [music] >> He was 60. No one told the quintuplets for 6 months. And in 1943, at 9 years old, the girls
00:31:29
were sent home to live with the rest of their family. They have two new little brothers have
00:31:34
been born. So, now there's seven siblings that they haven't seen that much of. >> [music]
00:31:39
>> And they're all expected to just magically have [music] this this fairy-tale reunion everything is
00:31:47
supposed to be great. And Cecile and Yvonne, like one says it and the other snaps her fingers and they say, "It was
00:31:53
like that." All of a sudden, >> [music] >> your life as you know it in the nursery
00:31:57
is over. We'll be right back. I've heard the story all my life growing up. I'd be at my grandparents' house
00:32:22
every weekend. Brian Callahan. His mother, Therese, was one of the Dionne quintuplets' older sisters.
00:32:30
She was 14 when the quintuplets were sent home to live with the rest of their family on their farm.
00:32:38
They'd moved into a new house that Oliva had built with money from the quintuplets' trust fund.
00:32:44
They called it the big house. As a a young boy, I I'd play in that house when it stood empty.
00:32:52
When the quintuplets moved back in, Oliva said he wanted everyone to act like one big family.
00:32:59
One way or the other, the siblings weren't interested in being part of the family with the quints, and the quints
00:33:04
in turn weren't interested in being part of the family with the siblings, >> [laughter]
00:33:10
>> if you can understand that. For the first time, the quintuplets were separated into different bedrooms.
00:33:18
At dinner time, at the table, they weren't seated together. They were all sandwiched between their siblings.
00:33:26
Oliva didn't think the quintuplets should go to a regular school. So, they eventually started a private
00:33:33
school for them in the old hospital nursery. Instead of having the siblings go to
00:33:38
school with their sisters, uh they then interviewed and selected 10 young ladies from the surrounding area
00:33:45
to come in and go to school with the quints as their classmates. Later, one of their classmates said,
00:33:53
"They wouldn't confide in us for a long, long time. You had to really, really work on gaining their confidence."
00:34:00
When they did, the quintuplets would ask the other girls questions about everything, going to the movies, getting
00:34:07
soda, having boyfriends. At first, the quintuplets slept at the school during the week.
00:34:14
But when they got closer with their classmates and teachers, Oliva told them, "Morally, those people are taking you
00:34:22
farther and farther from your parents. They are there to divide our family once again."
00:34:29
After that, Oliva wanted them to come back to the big house for meals and to sleep.
00:34:35
There was no bonding, even for the 9 years that they actually did live together.
00:34:40
They didn't know each other. You had the five princesses. They were raised by the nursing staff.
00:34:46
Everything was done for them. They had no concept how to take care of themselves, let alone do farm work.
00:34:53
Meanwhile, the other siblings, they were out still out working the farm. Mr. Dionne wanted them to be one of the
00:35:03
family, not one of five. But they they craved that that fiveness, you know, that togetherness that they'd had for
00:35:11
almost a decade together in the nursery. That that feeling to them was home to them more than any physical place.
00:35:19
And yet, they wanted to be individuals, also. They were very weary of being treated as a group with no no
00:35:29
differentiation between the five of them. So, they kind of wanted to go their separate
00:35:36
ways, and yet they really didn't know how or what it would be like to live like that.
00:35:44
When they were 18, Oliva enrolled them at a small Catholic women's college in Quebec.
00:35:50
Even though it was, you know, the small world of the campus, they felt that freedom and really
00:35:56
reveled in it, in addition to being able to be together as much as they wanted and [clears throat] craved with no no
00:36:04
punishment >> [music] >> for that. So, it's the first time in their life when they were free. Yeah. Yeah, it
00:36:11
really is. And I I believe Annette and at least one other of her sisters put it very much
00:36:16
like that and said I it was like being a bird. After about a year, Marie left school to
00:36:25
join a convent. And then, so did Émilie. Émilie has epilepsy, which is a huge secret.
00:36:34
Almost nobody outside of the family knows it. And while she is in this convent contemplating whether, you know, to
00:36:41
stay, if this is really for her or not, she has a seizure and she dies. Her sisters were all at home visiting
00:36:50
when they got the news. They were 20 years old. Cécile said there was There was a part
00:36:57
of her that she almost believed that they were immortal because it it had been such a
00:37:02
miracle that they had lived. She didn't fully understand, it seems, that they could also die.
00:37:11
>> [music] >> But at the same time, they say that was the real start of them finding their
00:37:16
individuality because once there's only four instead of five, then the public's attention really, really diverts. It's
00:37:26
like they're not They're not magic anymore. [music] There's a picture of the five of them
00:37:32
together. Émilie is in a casket. Yvonne later said she remembered thinking, "Émilie is still playing the part of a
00:37:41
quintuplet for the camera, >> [music] >> even though she's dead." Oliva opened their house to anyone,
00:37:49
{quote} genuine in their grief. And 5,000 people came to see Émilie. Shortly after, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile,
00:38:00
and Marie found out about their trust fund. Because they had no concept of its accumulation, they did not know how much
00:38:08
had been just sort of dribbled or siphoned away. The account contained about $800,000 for
00:38:17
the sisters. They would get access when they turned 21. Émilie's share would be split among all
00:38:24
the members of the Dionne family. But there were rules about how and when they could use the money.
00:38:31
And they had to keep paying to maintain their parents' house. Marie left her convent and decided to
00:38:39
use the money to open a flower shop called Salon Émilie. She liked to give flowers away to
00:38:45
friends and churches. The shop closed after 6 months. Annette and Cécile both married.
00:38:54
Cécile used trust fund money for her wedding and left her bouquet at Émilie's grave.
00:39:00
Marie married, too. All three had children. Yvonne went to nursing school and eventually became a librarian.
00:39:10
They all stayed in Quebec. Marie died at 35, reportedly from a blood clot in her brain.
00:39:18
Cécile eventually divorced. So did Annette. Her husband seems to have been a very
00:39:25
good, kind, understanding man. But as he said, you know, he would he would make plans with his wife in the morning,
00:39:32
go to work, and then come home and find that the plans had been changed because like Yvonne showed up and the two
00:39:39
sisters just changed everything. And he said, I you know, I only married one person.
00:39:46
It's you have to choose. It's either me or it's them. As Yvonne, Annette, and Cecile got
00:39:52
older, they stayed close, often calling each other every day. For a while, they moved in together.
00:40:00
And the money that was left in the trust fund dwindled. Cecile's son, Bertrand, he
00:40:08
was very aware of his brother's financial struggles, even as like a kid in school. He knew. And he remembered
00:40:14
very specifically somebody coming into class and they had a pencil with his mother's face and his
00:40:21
four aunts' faces on it. And he thought, why is there this pencil with their faces on it and they don't
00:40:27
get any money for this? So, as an adult, he goes to the Archive of Ontario and he starts digging into the
00:40:36
quintuplet guardianship files and looking for the financial records. In Toronto, Bertrand found that between
00:40:44
the ages of 4 and 10, half of the quintuplets' trust fund had been spent. >> [music]
00:40:50
>> And the records of the first 3 years of guardianship board meetings had been burned by the welfare minister.
00:40:57
>> [music] >> He comes home with like literally suitcases full of documents, discovering things like when the welfare
00:41:04
minister, who was part of the Dionne quintuplet guardians board, when he would come to North Bay and to [music]
00:41:11
look over the books, he wasn't charging his lodging and his [clears throat] fish
00:41:16
and chips to his government department. He was charging it to the Dionne quintuplet account.
00:41:22
The Dionnes were being billed for their own birthday presents. They were being billed for the toilet paper [music] in
00:41:28
the public washroom at Quintland. The quintuplet fund had paid [music] for Mr. Dionne's new cars. The girls had
00:41:37
unknowingly paid [music] tuition for their siblings' educations. They paid for Dr. Dafoe's stamps and
00:41:46
telephone bills and telegrams. The nurses' tennis court. Anytime somebody could dip into there
00:41:53
and justify it as necessary for maintaining that whole Dionne show, they did. And then Bertrand found out about the
00:42:05
gas tax. In the Quintland years, Ontario had increased its gas tax to 6 or 8 cents a
00:42:12
gallon versus the 2 or 3 cents in other provinces. That was really a big fat nail in the
00:42:20
coffin for him saying, that's proof that the government knew what these children were {quote} worth to the
00:42:29
province and that they were being used to make money. Bertrand went to court to get royalties
00:42:37
back for use of the sisters' names and faces, which no one had paid since 1957. They asked for $10 million
00:42:46
in restitution from the government of Ontario. More than a year later, the Ontario
00:42:53
government offered to pay Yvonne, Annette, and Cecile each $2,000 a month for the rest of their lives.
00:43:01
And they find it just deeply offensive. Like, we didn't ask for an allowance, you know, this was this was money that
00:43:07
was set aside for us. Where is it? The sisters decided to hold a press conference in Toronto.
00:43:15
They take the sort of for them unprecedented step after all those years of being, in my
00:43:21
opinion, abused by the media, they finally took the reins. And then the premier offers $2 million
00:43:29
and the Dionnes say, "No, not enough." He offers $3 million and they and they say, "No, not enough." And
00:43:36
finally he says $4 million and an inquiry into the accounting and they accepted that.
00:43:45
Brian Callahan says that beyond that press conference, the sisters had hardly ever come back to Ontario.
00:43:53
He remembers seeing them when Oliva died in 1979. What were your aunts like at the
00:44:00
funeral? Very very soft-spoken. You you wouldn't know that they were there. They just kind of blended in.
00:44:12
In 1995, Annette, Yvonne, and Cecile said publicly that Oliva had sexually abused them as children.
00:44:21
They said that it had taken a long time to talk about. {quote} But that's normal for something so deep.
00:44:29
They remembered telling a priest when they were younger. And he felt bound by his religious duty
00:44:37
as as if that had been a sort of confession that he didn't think he was able to tell that outside of the the
00:44:43
confession booth. When the news came out, Brian's mother, Therese, told a reporter,
00:44:51
we assert that we had good parents and that to our knowledge, our father was certainly not a sexual abuser.
00:44:58
They just didn't understand how a secret so monumental could have been kept when they were all in the same
00:45:04
house. All the other siblings actually uh signed [snorts] a joint letter denying anything to that fact,
00:45:16
refuting the claims of the quints. I I believe that it didn't happen, but I who's to say?
00:45:25
Yeah, I mean, that must be that must be a difficult thing to have circulating, you know,
00:45:34
very divisive. I can only imagine for a family. Oh, yes, it was. Yeah. And you have to understand that to this
00:45:41
family, due to what they were put through, the number five to them was like a number 13 to most families,
00:45:49
considered unlucky. Brian remembers when his younger brother joined a junior ice hockey team.
00:45:56
His name wasn't Dionne, so nobody knew his relationship. Uh what number do you think they gave
00:46:03
him to wear playing for the North Bay Trappers? Five. My mother refused to go and watch him
00:46:12
play hockey because he was wearing the number five. Extreme? Certainly. But that's the way it was with the family.
00:46:26
Today, there's a Dionne Quint Museum in North Bay, Ontario, inside the log house
00:46:32
where the quintuplets were born. Brian lives nearby and leads tours there. I actually had a uh
00:46:41
94-year-old woman come up this summer. Her son drove her up from Colorado. And she was actually she actually came
00:46:50
up when she was 3 years old to see the quintuplets [music] with her grandparents, drove all the way
00:46:56
up expecting to play with them. And of course, she wasn't allowed to play with them.
00:47:06
So, she made a pilgrimage, so she called it, to come up and fulfill her uh the one item on her bucket list for
00:47:15
that. And she's not the only one. Brian says another woman told him she visited because it was her own mother's
00:47:24
dying wish. Sometimes the museum gets donations of vintage dolls and other quintuplets
00:47:32
memorabilia people collected. In total, over 3 million people came to see the Dionne quintuplets at Quintland.
00:47:44
You have to understand that it was in the depression era and it gave people a a ray of hope, you
00:47:51
know, something to something to brighten their day. Annette Dionne told the New York Times,
00:48:00
I think the museum staying in North Bay will help them from making foolish choices like what they did to us.
00:48:07
It should never be repeated again. >> [music] >> In 2016, Cecile told the Montreal Gazette
00:48:16
that her son, Bertrand, who'd been managing her money for her, had disappeared. Her money was gone
00:48:23
and she was made a ward of the state. >> [music] >> Last year, she and Annette, the last
00:48:30
surviving quintuplets, died. They were 91. [music] >> [music] >> To see the famous photo of Elzire Dionne
00:48:54
and the quintuplets [music] on the day they were born, go to our Instagram at criminal_podcast
00:49:00
or find us on Facebook at thisiscriminal. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast.
00:49:09
Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. [music] Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.
00:49:14
Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sugioka, Lilly Clark, Lena
00:49:21
Sillison, >> [music] >> and Meghan Kenneain. Our show is mixed and engineered by
00:49:26
Veronica Somenetti. >> [music] >> Sarah Miller's book is The Miracle and Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets. You
00:49:33
can find a link on our website. Julian Alexander [music] makes original illustrations for each
00:49:39
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Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.