The Quintland Sisters(101)

In 1955, when Marie, Annette, Cécile, and Yvonne turned 21, only $800,000 remained in their trust fund.

*

Marie Dionne died of an apparent blood clot in 1970.

*

By the mid-1990s, Annette, Yvonne, and Cécile, divorced or unmarried, were living together on a combined income of $746 per month.

*

In 1998, bowing to public pressure, the Ontario government paid the surviving Dionne quintuplets and Marie’s children a one-time sum of $4 million. Cécile’s share was reportedly stolen by her son.

*

By 2018, Yvonne had died and Annette was living independently, but Cécile had once again been living as a ward of the state, subsisting off a basic government pension.

*

Between 1934 and 1941, tourism revenue amassed by the Ontario government related to Quintland was estimated to be half a billion dollars.





Acknowledgments


I’m extremely grateful to the following publishers for granting me gratis permission to reprint excerpts from the real-life articles included in my book: the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, the Canadian Press, UPI (previously UP), King Features Syndicate Inc., and Postmedia, on behalf of North Bay Nugget, Montreal Gazette, and the Ottawa Citizen. The New York Times editorial titled “The Quintuplet Problem” was licensed and reprinted with permission. In some cases, news articles and/or headlines were edited marginally to suit my story, most notably the mention of Lewis Cartwright in “New Dive Bomber Is Canada’s Contribution to the Skies” and the addition of the list of mourners to the 1954 article by the Canadian Press. The King Features columns were widely syndicated; I found these undated clippings via the City of North Bay Dionne Quints digitization project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship, Culture, and Recreation. The original publication dates could not be ascertained by the publisher, which granted permission. I chose dates that fit my story. La Voix is a fictional newspaper that kindly stepped in at the last minute when permission could not be obtained to reprint a bona fide publication.

I’m indebted to my readers, especially Ray Wood, who awoke in me an early appreciation for books and a later affection for birds. The Distillibus Writers (Joanne Carey, Jorie Soames, and Glenna Turnbull), Ashley and Francie (La Jooje) Howard, Tyler Dyck, Shelley Pacholok, Albert Berkshire, Anne Fleming, Adam Lewis Schroeder, and Tamas Dobozy all helped me with my first faltering chapters or endured multiple drafts. Other B.C. writers graciously shared their wisdom, reassurances, and community: John Lent, Nancy Holmes, Ashley Little, Alix Hawley, Michael V. Smith, Sean Johnston, and Erin McNair. Many thanks to Pat and Tony Dyck for the generous loan of their Tuwanek “Crab Shack,” where so much of this project was written, rejected, and written again.

In Ontario, I’m especially grateful to Natasha Wiatr of the Callander Bay Heritage Museum, who pointed the way to Quintland and helped me track down various bits and pieces, including key articles from the North Bay Nugget. In North Bay itself, my thanks go to Ed Valenti of the Dionne Quints Heritage Board and Elaine Pepin of the City of North Bay for giving me a peek into the not-yet-reopened Dionne museum. Farther south, props go to Brenda Liddle for a bed, a trout, and the shad flies.

Annette, Cécile, Marie, émilie, and Yvonne: few can imagine what you lived through and my own efforts, I’m sure, fall short. If nothing else, I hope my novel leads more people to learn of your story and to keep it in their hearts and minds.

This novel came to life thanks to my editor at William Morrow, Lucia Macro, and my agent, Stephanie Sinclair, who somehow managed to squeeze me into a year of other, more monumental firsts.

To other friends and family who believed in me before I did: you rock. Rene Unser: in my moments of deepest doubt, I applied your “Motivation Station” to my writing, if not my stride, which goes a long way to explaining why I’m running in the middle of the pack with a book in my hands.

The Quintland Sisters is dedicated to my mum, who will never get to read it, who loved me more than most people are lucky enough to be loved in a lifetime, and who raised me to always do the harder thing. It’s also for Tyler, who reads everything, who suffers me at my worst, and makes me want to be my best.





Bibliography and Sources Consulted


This book is a work of fiction. Its principal aim was to spin a make-believe tale that might help keep the truth from being forgotten; the facts themselves are stranger than fiction. Objectivity absconded long ago with its own share of the windfall, and I’ve made no attempt to track it down. Instead, I relied heavily on other sources that have tried, to varying degrees, to be more objective:



Barker, Lillian, The Dionne Legend: Quintuplets in Captivity (Doubleday, 1951).

Berton, Pierre, The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama (W. W. Norton, 1978).

Blatz, William E., N. Chant, and M. W. Charles et al., Collected Studies on the Dionne quintuplets (University of Toronto Press, 1937).

Brough, James, Annette Dionne, Cécile Dionne, Marie Dionne, and Yvonne Dionne, We Were Five: The Dionne Quintuplets Story from Birth Through Girlhood to Womanhood (Simon and Schuster, 1965).

The Dionne Quintuplets, documentary, National Film Board of Canada, directed and produced by Donald Brittain, CBC Television (1978).

Gifford, Jim, Hurricane Hazel: Canada’s Storm of the Century (Dundurn Press, 2004).

Legros, Donalda, and Marie-Jeanne Lebel, Administering Angels of the Dionne Quintuplets (Northern Publishing Co., 1936).