Cécile Dionne, one of the world-famous Dionne quintuplets, died earlier this week at the age of 91 following a long illness, a family spokesperson confirmed Friday.
Cécile and her sisters became an instant global sensation from the moment of their birth in the Ontario community of Corbeil on May 28, 1934 as they became the first quintuplets known to survive past infancy.
Carlo Tarini, a spokesperson of the family, confirmed the death and told The Canadian Press that Cécile died early Monday morning.
“She lived her life with quiet dignity, exemplary discretion, and gentle humour, despite the hardships of a childhood lived in the public eye,” reads an obituary Tarini shared.
Cécile weighed less than two pounds when she was born and dealt with osteoporosis and other ongoing health problems related to her premature birth. She also fought COVID-19 twice, Tarini said.
“She was not just a survivor, she was a real fighter. She showed remarkable strength of character,” Tarini said in an interview Friday.
The Dionne quintuplets were hailed as a salve to the gloom of financial austerity at the peak of their Depression-era fame — but the sisters said the attention came at a personal cost.
Cécile and her sister Annette, who is now the last remaining quintuplet, spoke to The Canadian Press in 2019 and said parents should view childhood as a precious time that shouldn’t be exploited for profit.
When the quintuplets were only months old, the Ontario government took them away from their cash-strapped parents, who already had five children before their brood doubled overnight.
The government then installed them across the street from their childhood home in a nursery-style exhibition called Quintland, where millions of tourists lined up to observe the girls sitting in a closed compound through one-way glass.
The attraction became so popular that the route between Toronto and North Bay was expanded to a four-lane highway to accommodate the flood of tourists coming to visit the quintuplets, Tarini said.
The girls also became ambassadors for companies such as Kellogg’s and Palmolive, and had five identical ships named after them during the Second World War.
When the quintuplets were 18 years old, they decided to move away from home and out of the public eye.
But it was thanks to Cécile that the sisters came forward asking for compensation, Tarini said, prompting the Ontario government to issue an apology and a $4-million settlement to the three surviving Dionne quintuplets in 1998 for the years they spent on display.
In the rare times she’d speak out during adulthood, Cécile was a vocal advocate on the consequences of childhood fame.
In 1997, Cécile, Annette and Yvonne emerged momentarily from their privacy to publish an open letter in Time magazine offering advice to the McCaughey family from Iowa after they welcomed septuplets.
“We sincerely hope a lesson will be learned from examining how our lives were forever altered by our childhood experience,” the sisters wrote in the letter.
“Multiple births should not be confused with entertainment, nor should they be an opportunity to sell products.”
The Dionne quintuplets’ family home has since been moved from its original site and transformed into a museum in North Bay, Ont., where the family legacy lives on.
