Elzire Dionne, Quintuplets’ Mother, Dies

Elzire Dionne, mother of the quintuplets whose birth and survival astounded the world 52 years ago, died Saturday at North Bay Civic Hospital. She was 77.

Hospital officials released no further information on her death, nor did family members. Mrs. Dionne had been living in a seven-bedroom home the Ontario government built for the celebrated family in 1941.

She was 25 when she gave birth on May 28, 1934 to five identical girls--Annette, Cecile, Yvonne, Emilie and Marie--in the family’s isolated log farmhouse in nearby Callander. The babies’ combined weight was 13 pounds, 6 ounces, and odds against their surviving were judged astronomical. But all lived to become adults, something described by doctors as unprecedented in the history of mankind.

Before Fertility Drugs

The Dionne quintuplets were born before the era of fertility drugs, which were developed in recent decades for treatment of hormone-related infertility. The use of such drugs has significantly increased the incidence of multiple births.

In their later years the Dionne daughters, who had to cope with worldwide attention that deprived them of their privacy, became alienated from their parents. Emilie died in 1954 and Marie died in 1970. But the surviving three attended the funeral of their father, Oliva, in 1979.

As youngsters, the dark-haired girls were dressed in identical outfits for public viewing almost every day. Nearly 3 million people visited “the Quints” between 1934 and 1943, as many as 6,000 on a single day.

‘I Was Disgusted’

“I resented everyone for the way we were brought up; I was disgusted,” Cecile Dionne Langlois said in a rare 1983 interview with La Presse of Montreal.

Two months after the births, the Ontario government appointed a board of guardians to protect the health and interests of the girls. One guardian was the doctor who delivered them, Dr. Allan Dafoe. Another was grandfather Olivier Dionne.

Dafoe was given nearly complete control and refused to allow the girls to live in their family home or to play with their other sisters. A hospital-nursery was built for the quints across the road from their home, and nurses and teachers were hired to care for them. The parents could visit whenever they wished, but had hardly any say in the girls’ lives.

Succeeded His Father

Oliva Dionne eventually succeeded his father on the board of guardians, but boycotted meetings in his battle to regain custody. It was nine years before the family was reunited under one roof.

It was estimated that the Dionnes brought in $20 million in tourist revenue for Ontario in 1937 and 1938. The girls did not leave the nursery grounds until 1939, when they were presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Toronto.

Oliva Dionne regained sole guardianship of the girls in 1941 and the government built a new brick home for the family, which by then had 12 children.