August 27, 2024

IN SEARCH OF QUINTS: CALLENDER GOOD START, BUT NORTH BAY THEIR REAL HOME NOW

Photos and story Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

CALLENDER — A sad account of quintuplets dying in a Gaza hospital bombing in the Middle East just over a week ago reminded me of a trip north I took just days before.

I was at loose ends and driving up Hwy. 11 when I opted to veer off in to Callender I’d long heard about but previously passed by anytime in the area.

My grandfather, Walter, had taken my dad, Hugh, up to see the Dionne quintuplets shortly after they were born in 1934 and became a public spectacle.

Irene Turney, 92, told me recently that she, too, had gone to see them with her family — but doesn’t actually remember viewing them.

**Dr. Dafoe’s office in Callender was a good start with its heritage museum a reminder of 90s years ago.**

So I pulled in to the picturesque little community on Lake Nipissing looking for any sign of “Quintland,” where they were displayed after the province took them in to temporary custody. They were born just outside Callender on a farm in Corbeil.

Ninety years later there is no real reference to or common awareness of the five girls Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie and Marie. Annette and Cécile are still alive. They were 90 on May 28 and live in Quebec, but weren’t well enough to attend a celebration in North Bay.

Though the home of their physician Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe (1883–1943) remains on Lansdowne Street and is now the Callander Bay Heritage Museum

It’s located across the street from the community cenotaph and a block off the main street, which has three gorgeously manicured and active parks that line the lake’s wonderful waterfront.

A neighbour said he didn’t have much to do with them. And a restaurateur talking to two couples about the same famous daughter said she thought they’d moved the home to North Bay where she was right there is a museum.

Closed on the day I arrived. Next time.

The original turnstile used at “Quintland” where thousands of curious Canadians and Americans entered to view the Dionne quintuplets going about their daily lives in their growing years leading up to the Second World War.

Which was OK, as I got to explore a little of the forsaken former CFB North Bay that has seen much better days, despite being previously led by mayor Vic Fedeli Ontario’s current deputy premier.

**North Bay is still the Gateway to the North. But it’s fallen on hard times and one only hopes it will soar again.**

Once this city of 53,000 boasted being a missile base for silos of NORAD warheads in the northern defence of Canada and the United States — as well as numerous founding First Nations — histories and heritages it still proudly lives off.

But one that beyond it and perhaps Canadore College has little more to offer northerners besides housing, strip malls and a pretty much depressingly gutted core.

Fortunately its vast natural setting remains otherwise untouched.

Lets hope sunnier days return for the voyageur and rail crossroad — home of the Ontario Northland rail and bus transportation company.

For it lingers lightly in the casting shadow of its western regional capital Sudbury, whose smoke stacks can’t be seen but smelt (sic).