In a government-built complex that came to be known as Quintland, as many as 6,000 people a day gawked at the quints, the first known to survive infancy, through one-way mirrors installed in their house. The government used the Dionnes to sell everything from war bonds to pencils embossed with the girls’ faces. When their parents finally won custody of the girls in 1943, the Dionnes had raised millions of dollars for Ontario. The girls each received $116,000 when they turned 21.
The money is long gone, but the bitterness remains. An epileptic seizure killed Emilie when she was 20; Marie was 36 when she died of a stroke. Two years ago the surviving sisters wrote a book, ““Family Secrets,’’ where they claimed their father, Oliva, sexually abused them all for years. When Annette asked her priest what to do about being molested in the family car, she writes, he told her to keep quiet, pray and ““wear thick coats.’’ (Both parents are now dead.) But the Dionnes reserve their greatest anger for the Ontario provincial government. The women say they should be compensated for the millions they raised, not to mention the miserable fishbowl life they led. At the moment, the three live together in a small house in suburban Montreal. All of them suffer from epilepsy and acute arthritis. They survive on a government pension and the $50,000 royalties from the book, now mostly spent. Cecile, a former nurse and divorced mother of four, says they own a car but rarely drive it because they can’t afford the gas. ““People think we are rich,’’ she says by telephone, in French-accented English. ““I would just like to have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life.''
After a lifetime spent overcoming the damage of too much publicity, the women now hope media attention will rescue them. When the Dionnes hinted a few months ago that they might sue the government for $7 million, the Canadian papers were filled with editorials supporting their cause. ““We’re trying to leverage their notoriety to put some pressure on the politicians,’’ says Carlo Tarini, spokesman for the sisters. A spokesman for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General says the Dionnes’ case is ““under consideration,’’ which is basically what they said in March. In the meantime, the Dionne sisters continue to wait and watch the world go crazy over another multiple birth. Cecile can hardly believe the publicity surrounding the McCaughey babies. ““I’m surprised by the interest. There have been so many since us,’’ she says. Asked to give the Iowa family advice on how to lead a normal life, she gasps. This, after all, is a woman hard pressed to remember a time when she was happy. ““Happy is a big word. I don’t like to use it much,’’ she says. Perhaps that’s because she didn’t have many chances to.
