The Quintland Sisters(99)

Yours sincerely,

Emma

Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

Callander, ON





1954


Epilogue


August 9, 1954 (The Canadian Press)



* * *



TRAGIC, SOLEMN: QUINTS BID ADIEU TO éMILIE

5,000 Wait in Rain to Pay Respects

By C. M. Fellman

Callander, ONTARIO—It was like those famous old years all over again—but with solemn, tragic overtones. Crowds stretched in long lines in front of the Dionne home today, just as they did in the 1930s. They spilled out onto the grey asphalt parking grounds where cars stood row upon glistening row.

This August afternoon in 1954 was typical of a warm Sunday afternoon from 1934 to 1940 when the Dionne quintuplets were on display.

It took death to revive that old familiar scene.

Today there were no impish children on exhibition behind huge one-way-view windows in the public pavilion. Instead the long lines of men and women turned left to an imposing yellow brick Georgian mansion where the body of émilie, fourth-born of the famous five, lay in state.

For two hours in the afternoon a stream of 5,000 persons flowed in and out of the quiet Dionne living room where the open casket was placed.

Outside the gate of the iron fence surrounding the Dionne property had been flung open to the public for the first time in 14 years. Not since the public viewing of the girls was discontinued in 1940 had a public visit been permitted by the publicity-shy Dionne family. The four grief-stricken quintuplet survivors—Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, and Marie—sat beside émilie’s body from the time of its arrival from Montreal at 10 p.m. Saturday until 2 a.m. today.

Among those who came to pay their final respects today were nuns and priests from schools where the quintuplets and their siblings had studied over the years, as well as many of the physicians, nurses, orderlies, teachers, guards, secretaries, and domestic staff who once worked at the Allan R. Dafoe Hospital and Nursery.

Used with permission.





November 2, 1954

303–555 West 57th

New York City, NY

Dear Emma Trimpany, You likely won’t remember me, but as a young girl I was great friends and pen pals with your little sister, Edith, who I came to know during the many holidays I spent with my grandparents in Callander. I don’t recall whether I ever met you back then, but I knew from Edith’s letters and Christmas cards that she had a big sister—an artist—who left for New York and never came back. My family and I were deeply sorry to hear of the accident that took your parents and Edith last year.

We are coming to terms with our own family tragedy now. As you may know, my Uncle Lewis drowned on the Humber River during Hurricane Hazel last month. I found your letter in a bundle of mail when I was helping my mother clean out his flat in Toronto and recognized your name and the New York address, as well as the Callander postmark. Perhaps you saw my uncle when he attended the Dionne girl’s funeral in Callander a few months ago? Her death affected him profoundly, I think: he ended up spending several weeks in the area, which had been his boyhood home, and has made several trips back again over the last month. I don’t know if you knew him before he went away to England. He was a wonderful man—funny, imaginative, and kind, with a lucky streak that kept him safe through the whole war, always landing with his backside in the butter, as my father used to say. But his luck ran out. It’s been extremely hard to accept that he could have survived all those years zipping around the Jerries in his beloved planes only to be taken from us now. In any case, I’m returning your letter as I found it, unopened, and I hope I’m not surprising you with our sad news.

Yours sincerely, Sheryl Cartwright 292 St. Paul Street Burlington, ON





[ENCLOSURE: Letter from E.T. to L.C., October 1954]

October 10, 1954





239 75th Street


Toronto, ON

Dear Lewis,

Tonight the rain paused (no doubt to refill its buckets) and I walked our route down to the lake on my own, missing you, wondering what you were doing at that very moment in the honk and bustle of Toronto. I couldn’t help but sense the curtains twitching in every window in Callander as I strolled the streets of my childhood. My reputation as the gin-swilling, paint-splattered, communist-leaning, Gotham-corrupted spinster has no doubt been enriched beyond measure, since I’ve been shacked up for weeks with a man in the old Trimpany home. And with the shell-shocked Cartwright son, no less! A wag already established in the county records as an unrepentant bachelor. My parents, bless them, must be turning in their graves.

At least we’ve given the busybodies something fresh to talk about, something other than émilie’s death. I’ve tried not to think about how this tragedy has thrust the other Dionne girls back into the spotlight again, just as they were starting to find normal lives for themselves. All those photographers and reporters milling around at Em’s funeral, just as they used to do in front of the farmhouse and the nursery—it makes me cringe. Because normal isn’t possible for them now, is it? And I had a hand in that, despite my best intentions: painting my pictures for all those adverts and calendars, helping to keep them in the public eye. Celebrity couldn’t keep them safe and it didn’t keep me safe either, it just made the shadows offstage that much darker. We did everything wrong, Lewis, we all did. Even those of us who thought we were doing some good. The worst part is, even now, knowing what I know, I can’t tell you how on earth we could have done any better.