1969 - Dionne Quintuplets At 35: Life Has Not Been Too Kind

Published by Newport News, Virginia, May 29th, 1969. Interview in Montreal.

The slim, crop-haired young mother of four laughed gaily. "Ah yes, the age 35 is something special, but particularly for a woman," she acknowledged. "But that is the same for every woman, n'est-ce pas? It is no different for us because we are the quints..."

Cécile Dionne Langlois spoke both as a woman and as one of the world's most famous sisters--the four surviving Dionne quintuplets whose quest for "normal lives" was doomed from their odds-disproving birth in an impoverished farmhouse in 1934 in the northern Ontario wilderness.

Yesterday, May 28, the Dionne sisters were 35, a time of critical self-appraisal for many a woman. But the Dionne sisters, whose very birth in those days before fertility drugs was a medical marvel, and whose growth to young womanhood was deeply scarred by memories of days when they were once described with cruel accuracy as "North America's No. 1 peepshow," want only to have the day go unnoticed.

"On May 28, I have a dental appointment--and you know how hard it is to get one these days," Cécile said with firm practicality at her home in Quebec City.

"I don't see how I would be able to come to Montreal to see my sisters--I have to get the children to school each day."

'Too Old'

"Besides, don't you think we're getting too old for birthday parties?" she added gently. "For me, it is not such a good idea to look back on the years--I hate to do that," Cécile said slowly. I have learned that is is useless to cry over what happened in the past, to have regrets. It is better to take it the way it comes, make the best of it, and go on."

For the Dionne quintuplets, the joys would seem to have come at one-fifth the rate most women see by 35, while the sorrows have kept multiplying.

The charmed circle of their five lives was broken three months after their 20th birthday in 1954, when Émilie suffocated during an epileptic seizure at a convent rest-home north of Montreal.

In the decade and a half since then, three sisters--Annette, Cécile and Marie--have married, and among them they have nine children. But only Annette's marriage has endured.

The fourth sister, Yvonne, shows no interest in marital life and has yet to find satisfaction or comfort in the world outside the convent life which was forbidden her.

The alienation between the sisters and their firm-handed father, Oliva Dionne, has grown wider through the years, with each side seemingly less able or willing to heal the past wounds as years go by. Relatives say Oliva and his wife Elzire, now in their 60s, have yet to see all their grandchildren.

Rapproachment Tried

Cecile tried to work some rapproachment when she visited her parents last February in Callander, Ont., and she recalled, "It gave me much joy to see them again. They seemed to be pretty well for their ages, although Mama has to take care of herself. She has trouble with her legs."

But friends said she returned home deeply hurt that she has encountered a lingering "coldness" from her father.

A few years ago, Papa and Mama Dionne came to Montreal--and stayed at a motel. The girls brought some of their children to meet their grandparents there. Communication between the girls and their parents is now chiefly by way of sporadic cards for such events as Christmas and birthdays.

The marriages of both Marie and Cécile have ended in legal separations, and friends dismiss any prospects of reconciliation in either case.

Marie, long the frailest of the sisters, has rounded out somewhat, and after going through a strawberry-blonde phase, has now settled for a dark-blonde hairdo in a medium-length cut.

With the breakup of her marriage to provincial government excise expert Florian Houle four years ago, friends say she has retreated back into the reserve shell from which she so belatedly had been emerging.

Profound depression left Marie unable to cope with day-to-day problems and forced her to put her two daughters, Monique, 8, and Émilie, 6 [Correction: Émilie was 8 and Monique was 6] into a foster home operated by nuns. Friends say they were "very deeply worried about both her physical condition and her attitude to life" until she recently agreed to medical care.

A double tragedy struck Cécile, outwardly the most socialable and high-spirited of the sisters, but inwardly an actuely sensitive young woman.

Six years ago, Bruno, one of twins boys born to her and gregarious, extroverted sound technician Philippe Langlois, died after living 15 months in hopeless deformity from birth. Within two years, her marriage was at an end.

Unlike Marie, friends said Cécile has slowly learned to stitch her life back together. "Trouble and life have given Cécile a maturity and a wisdom," one intimate said.

Occasionally now, Cécile will speak of her marriage.

"There is no chance of a reconciliation," she firmly told a reporter who had known her from her engagement days. "At least, not for now...it is unfortunate, but sometimes these things cannot be helped."

Her voice trailed off as she recalled her dead son. "Bruno...I cannot talk of him. That is a part of my life that belongs to nobody." It has been the only multiple birth in the family since the quintuplets were born.

While foster parents and relatives cared for her two older children during the traumatic months immediately after her separation, Cécile now has her family together in a comfortable apartment she runs without any outside help. The eldest, 10-year old Claude, yearns to be a veterinarian "and always keeps us busy with his pets"--currently, cats--Cécile said. The next two boys, Patrice, 9, and the surviving twin, 7-year old Bertrand, are "typical boys who have to be coaxed to do homework most times," while her youngest is her only daughter, Elizabeth [Correction, Elisabeth], 6.

"It takes lots of patience and courage to raise children without a father," Cécile said. "I try hard to give them security, a sense of stability. In this day and in our world, that's pretty hard to do at the best of times."

Separated by 200 miles from her sisters in Montreal, Cécile said she manages to see them "about every four or five months."

Cécile said Yvonne, the only unmarried sister, is the "most reserved and perhaps the most individual of us."

Yvonne shares a modern apartment on the slopes of Mount Royal, in the heart of the city, with a social scienes worker recently returned from volunteer work in India. The apartment is furnished with the samelow-keyed but costly taste that marks Yvonne's taste in clothes. It's highlighted by works of art, craft and sculpture that reflect Yvonne's longheld artistic bent.

Considerable Talent

Possessed of considerable talent, according to both friends and unbiased observers, Yvonne has recently been studying art at the University of Montreal. Yet a close relative remarked, "She loses interest in things. She'll start something, but won't finish it. I don't know why, but she seems always restless..."

The restless introversion has marked Yvonne's life since she left convent life after three vain attempts to adapt to a nun's role.

"The last time she tried to enter, they just told her, 'The life if not for you. We cannot take you.' She was very hurt," a friend recalled.

Alone of the sisters, she has shown some adventurous spirit. She has travelled to Europe on two extensive trips, and visited her friend in India for a month, a country that "deeply fascinated her." Se [She] is also the only one of the sisters who regularly drives her own car, though all but Marie are licensed.

The gravitational center for the Dionne sisters is the one who apparently has led the most trouble-free life, Annette, whose marriage to finance company branch manager Germain Allard seemingly has only one lack: Germain said they would like to have a girl to add to their trio of lively sons.

"Maybe a girl would help tone down the boys a bit," Allard laughed. "They can be quite a handful."

The one-shy, piano-playing Annette has bloomed into an almost typical exurbanite young woman under the outgoing but gentle prodding of Allard.

"My work means we have to do quite a bit of entertaining, and she does it very well," Germain said proudly. "At first, it took a lot of patience.

"She didn't want to go out because she thought people would always be looking at her because she was a quint. But it got easier each time, and now she knows that people like her for herself, and are not just curious about her because she is a Dionne quintuplet."

Shopping Feared

At one time, the Dionne girls feared even simple shopping expeditions because they were almost invariably spotted, and the experience of being gaped at invariably caused the girls to flee.

"Now, we can go just about anywhere, shopping, or dinner or a movie--and no one will recognize her. To Annette, that is a very real luxury--not to be stared at," Germain said.

"All the girls are the same about that," he added. "Annette once told me that they always knew the tourists were there watching them, when they were growing up in Callander."

Tourists by the thousands poured into the tiny community through the years to watch the black-haired mirror-image five little girls play and study through supposedly one-way glass. It was one estimated the Ontario government collected $4-million in gasoline taxes alone from tourists who drove to Callander.

"Annette said they could see shadows, and even feel the presence of the people. It's hard for anyone like you or myself, ordinary people, to realize was it must have been like."

"They felt they were closed up in a prison. Do you know, when they finally left home to go to a convent, it was because they thought that would be the only way they would ever escape to live their own lives," Germain said, shaking his head in pitying disbelief.

The home in which the girls were raised--for a time away from both their parents and their eight other brothers and sisters--recently was sold by the girls and is being turned into a rest home for the aged. A sign still marks the birthplace.

Financial Security

Those days, as painful as they are in retrospect, did provide them with financial security for the rest of their lives.

Each sister came into a quarter-million dollar trust fund at the age of 21--Émilie's share on her death was divided among the entire family--through a fund established in their infancy by the Ontario government. Investment of the fortunes by a trust company since then gives the girls regular monthly interest payments that provide handsomely for them without need for other resources.

Yet through their growing years each was allowed so little personal spending money that the girls often approached money matters with considerable naivete, and often called themselves, "the poor quints."

"Once Yvonne called me to ask how she could go about moving her account from one bank to another," Germain recalled. "She had been in a convent and the monthly checks were just piling up, until there were many thousands in the account. Yet she didn't know something as simple as transferring an account.

"Now Annette runs her own housekeeping budget, and she stays within it, too, unless something unexpected happens," Germain said, smiling.

Like Cécile, Annette runs her 10-room house in nearby St. Bruno, Que., without any help. "She enjoys it, and it has taught her to be self-sufficient. She likes to try out different dishes and has become a good cook--she knows I like good food."

While not an active sports participant, Annette enjoys such recreations as yachting and long walks in the countryside near their country home in the suburbs across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. Like other women in their 30s, she worries about her weight, watches her diet, and works out daily on an exercise cycle.

'Artists' Pale

All the girls except Yvonne--"she has the artist's pale look"--have developed an interest in makeup and clothes, unlike their younger days when they invariably wore shapeless dark look-alike clothes. Annette has a special fondness for wigs.

The Allards' three sons--Jean-François, 10, Charles, 8, and Eric, 7,--all are aware of their mother's fame as one of the Dionne sisters, "but they are totally unaffected by it," Germain said.

"Occasionally, they will be questioned by some of the kids at school, but less and less as time goes by."

Germain, a vigorous young man with a lightly-graying crewcut, describes himself as "something of a filter for the girls," and tries to shield them from intruders.

"Everyone expects them to be the same, but for me it is fascinating how different they are from each other," he remarked. "Each one has quite a distinct personality, and each has taken up quite a different life."

Germain would like to see the breach between parents and daughters healed, though he acknowledges that, "Mr. Dionne still does not accept me. He was a very possessive father. He loved his daughters but he loved them in the wrong way--He wanted always to keep them to himself.

"Maybe if he had loved the girls less, or in a different way, the girls would have better memories of him. They feel very warmly to their mother--she is such a maternal type of lady.

"Their memories of Dr. Dafoe are nice, too," Germain said, recalling the country doctor, the late Allan Roy Dafoe, who delivered the quintuplets and almost gave up on them because he thought they would never survive their first night of life. "But Mr..."

The article ends here on Newspapers.com.