One Dionne quintuplet returns to family home for ceremony

CTV National News: Quintuplet visits former home One of the two surviving Dionne quintuplets has returned to her childhood home which was been turned into a museum. Eric Taschner has more.

A troubling chapter in Canadian history was marked in Ontario Sunday, as one of the two surviving Dionne quintuplets attended a ceremony at the house where she and her siblings were born.

The Dionne quintuplets’ birth in May, 1934, in a humble farmhouse in Corbeil, Ont., was an international sensation, as no other set of quintuplets in the world had ever survived more than a few days.

But the girls were not allowed to stay with their family for long. Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Yvonne and Marie were taken away by the Ontario government and put on public display in a specially-built compound called Quintland. The girls lived there until they were nine years old, with only occasional contact with their parents and siblings.

After a custody fight, the quints were reunited with their parents, but all five have said they did not have happy childhoods.

Today, only two survive: Annette and Cecile, both 84, who now live in Montreal.

The log house that was their birth home has been a museum for decades, but had to be re-located last fall to a new spot in North Bay. It's now in a downtown park on the shore of Lake Nipissing and will re-open to the public next year.

Though health issues prevented Cecile from attending a ceremony Sunday to unveil a new plaque at the home, her sister Annette was there to welcome news reporters and cameras.

When asked how she now feels about her history, Annette refuses to dwell on the dark side, except to she say she hopes the publicity of the newly-reopened museum will help make sure no other family goes through what hers did ever again.

With a report from CTV Northern Ontario’s Eric Taschner