Lives On Display: The Dionne Quintuplets

Lives On Display: The Dionne Quintuplets

Author: Dark Poutine / Curiouscast June 29, 2026 Duration: 1:00:16
Episode 425: In May 1934, five identical girls were born in a farmhouse outside Corbeil, Ontario. They were the first quintuplets known to survive infancy anywhere in the world. Within weeks, the Province of Ontario had taken them from their parents. What followed was nine years inside a government-run compound called Quintland, where millions of tourists paid to watch the Dionne sisters play through one-way glass, twice a day, while their faces sold soap, cereal, and corn syrup across North America. The girls went home in 1943. The horror of what happened next took decades to come to light. Sources: The Canadian Encyclopedia — Dionne Quintuplets | (Canadian Encyclopedia) Dionne Quintuplets: The Miracle Babies | (Canadian Encyclopedia) Dionne quintuplets | (Wikipedia) Dionne quintuplets | Deaths, Parents, Names, & Facts | (Britannica) The Birth of the Dionne Quintuplets | (Government of Canada) The Dionne Quintuplets National Historic Event | (Parks Canada) Dionne Quintuplets (1934—) | (Encyclopedia.com) Dionne Quintuplets (b. 1934) | (Encyclopedia.com) The Miracle and Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets by Sarah Miller (Scholastic Focus, 2017) | (Book) We Were Five: The Dionne Quintuplets' Story from Birth through Girlhood to Womanhood by James Brough with Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Yvonne Dionne (1965) | (Book) Family Secrets: The Dionne Quintuplets' Own Story by Jean-Yves Soucy with Annette, Cécile, and Yvonne Dionne (1997) | (Book) The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama by Pierre Berton (1977) | (Book) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Podcast Episodes
Unnatural Selection — The Alberta Eugenics Act [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:20
Episode 424: Between 1928 and 1972, the Alberta government authorized the forced sterilization of nearly 3,000 Albertans deemed "unfit" to reproduce. They were told they were having their appendix removed. Many were chil…
The Murder of Francis Rattenbury: The Man Who Built B.C. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:03
Episode 423: Francis Mawson Rattenbury designed the BC Parliament Buildings, the Empress Hotel, and the building that now houses the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as many others. He was the most celebrated architect in…
The Hogg’s Hollow Tunnel Disaster [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:39
Episode 422: On St. Patrick's Day, 1960, five Italian immigrant construction workers — Pasquale Allegrezza, Giovanni Carriglio, Giovanni Fusillo, and brothers Alessandro and Guido Mantella — died beneath the Don River in…
Ripoffs and a Rolex: The Murder of Ronald Joseph Platt [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:39
Episode 421: On July 28, 1996, a fisherman hauling nets off the coast of Devon, England pulled up a body. The dead man had no wallet, no identification — nothing but a Rolex watch still ticking on his wrist. When British…
Every Dog Has Its Day : The Case of Valentine Shortis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:48
Episode 420: On the night of March 1st, 1895, in the paymaster's office of the Montreal Cotton Company in Valleyfield, Quebec, a twenty-year-old Irish immigrant named Francis Valentine Cuthbert Shortis shot three men — k…
The 2017 Las Vegas Shooting: Canadian Connections [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:16
Episode 419: On the night of October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on more than 22,000 concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on the Las Vegas Strip. In eleven minutes, 58 people were killed and hundreds more woun…
Air Canada Flight 797: The Death of Stan Rogers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:22
On June 2nd, 1983, Air Canada Flight 797 departed Dallas, Texas, bound for Montreal, Quebec, with a stop in Toronto. Forty-one passengers and five crew were on board. Shortly before 7 pm Eastern time, a fire broke out in…
Murder Behind Vinyl: The Tragic Death of Lukas Strasser-Hird [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:59
Episode 417: In the early hours of November 23, 2013, 18-year-old Lukas Strasser-Hird was violently beaten behind the Vinyl nightclub in Calgary, in an alley off 10th Avenue Southwest. He was rushed to the hospital, but…
Matthew Baillie Begbie — The Hanging Judge [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:06
Episode 416: Matthew Baillie Begbie (1819–1894) served as the first judge of mainland British Columbia during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, arriving in 1858 as the colony struggled to impose order across a fast-growing an…
The Legend of the Thunderbird [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:05
Episode 415: For generations, people across North America have reported seeing enormous birds, describing wingspans that seem impossible and encounters they struggle to explain. Long before those reports were written, th…