The Quintland Sisters(39)
Most astonishing of all was the strip of canvas, at least five feet high and perhaps fifty yards long, strung between two towering poles on either side of the road with the words WELCOME TO QUINTLAND! in large block letters.
“My word!” I said, mostly to myself. “Quintland!”
Lewis nodded at me but said nothing.
We drove the few miles into town, and I gaped out the window at the steady stream of cars making their way to the nursery. I hadn’t thought so many different makes of automobiles existed, let alone within driving distance of Callander. I spotted plates from as far away as British Columbia, Oregon, Florida, Texas, and California. Last year when I was regularly walking or riding my bicycle between the nursery and town, the road was a rutted track. Now the government has paved it all the way south to Orillia. Tiny cabins that have long sat in disrepair looked to have been spruced up with a coat of paint and bright curtains in the windows, all of them with signs that read ROOM FOR RENT and NO VACANCY. Halfway along the road to Corbeil we passed a filling station on a patch of land I swear was thick forest the last time I’d been by. Now I counted thirteen cars idling in wait for one of the five shiny new gas pumps painted in different colors, each emblazoned with the name of one of the quintuplets: émilie, Cécile, Annette, Yvonne, and Marie.
“I had no idea,” I breathed. Lewis glanced at me and bobbed his head, finally managing to say, “It’s quite something, isn’t it, Miss Trimpany?”
Closer to Callander, the vehicles were scarcely moving, with more cars and trucks of every shape and size joining the queue that snaked north out of town toward Corbeil.
We must have been thinking the same thing at the same time, because just as I was about to ask Lewis what time the line of cars might be expected to dissipate for the evening, he said softly: “It stays busy heading out of town until the two-thirty showing, then gets a bit jammed in the other direction. If you don’t mind, Miss Trimpany, I’ll wait until after six to fetch you this evening.”
I was looking out the window at the clouds of dust mingling with the puffs of exhaust from the cars, a mix of eagerness and irritability written across the faces of the drivers and passengers.
“Of course,” I said, realizing as I said it that even by taking me all the way into town instead of down to the lakeshore, Lewis was no doubt adding an extra hour to his workday.
I thanked him earnestly when we reached Mother and Father’s house and again later when he deposited me back out here at the nursery. Our drive in the evening was much quicker and more peaceful, scarcely a car on the road. With my window open to the evening, I could hear the loons calling on the lake, the frogs croaking in the swamp, and the rustle of the birch leaves in the wind—all sounds I hadn’t thought to miss that morning amid all the engine noise. I turned to look at Lewis and realized his eyes were on the sky, although they dipped every few seconds to keep an eye out for moose or wild turkeys dashing onto the empty road. I leaned forward and saw a flock of little birds, diving and wheeling in the dusk, but as if in a single formation. Lewis glanced my way and smiled. “Starlings,” he said. “There are more and more on Lake Nipissing every year. They call this”—he made a circle in the air with his hand, as if clearing steam from a mirror—“a murmuration.” He slowed the truck, and the flock seemed to warm to its audience, the many birds funneling this way and that, as if they were being swirled in a pot.
We sat in silence for a moment. “Extraordinary,” I said, straining to watch as the little swarm climbed into the darker sky, then dipped past the truck. And quite abruptly they were gone.
I was bursting to talk about it with Ivy—not just the birds but the daytime crowds, the lines of traffic, M. Dionne’s gigantic shop. But Ivy gave a laugh and rolled her eyes at me, saying, “I’ve been telling you for ages, Em! It’s been like this for months.”
September 28, 1936 (Toronto Star)
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QUINTS WORTH MILLION ANNUALLY TO NORTH BAY
Estimates Indicate 350,000 U.S. Tourists This Year Spent That Sum U.S. citizens left over a million dollars in this city and district during the past summer’s visits to the Dionne quintuplets, according to estimates. Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe reports that about 500,000 persons made the trek to the Dafoe hospital to see the infants. At least 350,000 were from the United States.
Every night during the summer months all hotels, tourist homes, and cabins were dragging in the welcome mat and hanging out the standing room only sign. Men, women, and children literally went begging for a place to sleep.
Used with permission.
October 25, 1936
Something is troubling Ivy, but she won’t tell me what it is. I’ve pressed her, but she just shakes her head. It’s not Fred—if anything, they seem even closer, more openly tender to one another than I’ve ever seen them. They still have not announced a wedding date, but Ivy insists she is in no rush.
We are all so exhausted. Nurse Nicolette left Saturday for a few weeks’ leave to visit her family in Quebec, so I hope, when she is back, Ivy can take a proper holiday. The girls are also running us ragged. We’ve had to move the bookshelves and rocking chairs out of the playroom because the girls were forever trying to climb on top of them. The other day they took the cushions off the settee and heaped them underneath the windowsills, then one by one were boosting each other up onto the ledge and leaping off. I nearly had a heart attack when I walked in to find my little émilie readying herself to launch into the air. Cécile and Annette are always very contrite after they’ve been reprimanded for doing something silly, but Yvonne, Marie, and émilie will don expressions of utter surprise, as if to say, I’m terribly sorry, it never occurred to us that this would be a problem for you!