June 27, 2014

On a cold May day in 1934 in a drafty farmhouse near the village of Corbeil, Elzire Dionne went into labour two months premature. The midwives were called for and Elzire gave birth to a little girl and then another and another. Her husband Olivia went for the doctor in the nearby town of Callander. By the time he returned with the doctor, there were five. Elzire had suspected twins but this was unheard of. The doctor saw no hope of Elzire or her five babies surviving the night. He went home while the midwives remained to care for mother and children, rubbing them and giving them warm toddy through the long night. All lived to see the morning and thus began the saga of the Dionne Quintuplets.

I knew the Quintuplet museum was in North Bay but completely forgot about it until I pulled up to a busy intersection on the way out of town. There beside the highway, completely out of place, sat a little old wooden farmhouse. The story of what happened to the girls under the fascinated gaze of the world is tragic to say the least. The miracle of their birth, and during the Depression too, destroyed any chance of a normal life. As soon as the word got out, the Chicago Fair signed a contract with the father for the girls to be displayed at the fair. The Canadian government stepped in and argued that since the mother hadn’t signed, the contract was invalid and furthermore the parent were unfit. The girls became wards of the state. A complex was built across the street that was part living quarters, hospital, school, and amusement park. Under the watchful eyes of doctors, nurses, nuns, guards, and the unseen multitudes of tourists on the otherwise of the one way glass, the girls lived in “Quintland” until the parent regained custody when the girls were nine. The government built a new huge house for the girls to live with their parents and eights or so siblings. I cannot imagine how difficult that reunion must have been: Canada’s princess on one side of the table and rural farm children, parents on the other side.

What fascinates me about this history is not the girls themselves, one can only contemplate with regret what was done to them, but the institutional apparatus around them. Under the care of nuns, their lives would undoubtedly have been disciplined. But the medical knowledge that would have been exacted on their lives is no less awesome-in the sense of fearfully powerful. I couldn’t help but feel like I was on the edge of Foucault’s study on prisons and disciplinary power generally. From an academic interest, it is unfortunate that Quintland fell into disrepair and is demolished. It would be a phenomenal look into what was considered good and right child rearing at that time; something that no child actually ever experiences and probably for the better but under the ever watchful eyes of the expert in the lab.

The other aspect of this story that stood out to me is the way the Dionne Quintuplet’s experiences reflect the troubled history of French Catholic and English Protestant in Canada. I noticed earlier in the day that French was spoken as often as not in Tim Hortons. I’m fast approaching the Ottawa River, which flows between the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Early communities in this area were not divided by that neat geographical boundary. As French Catholics, the Dionnes never stood a chance at keeping their daughters. Prejudices against them would have been deeply held. Corbeil was a poor dirt road village, which quickly changed once the girls became famous. Language became an issue with the doctors being English and so on. The girls moved to Montreal right after high school. Today you see many white and green Franco-Ontarian flags bearing the trillium and fleur-de-lys but you have to wonder how different things would have been for the Dionne Quintuplets were they born into the English Protestant village of Callander.

Road Report: 134km
The road conditions are generally good except for about 15km once you get past North Bay. They’re redoing the highway so it’s a little easier to take. The biggest challenge is actually the hills. Turns out there’s a reason why there’s room for such a big park as Algonquin Park. It’s all hills.