MAKING MONEY OUT OF THE QUINS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page VI (Supplement)

MAKING MONEY OUT OF THE QUINS

•Prosperity Comes To Callander-

The Dionne quintuplets, who will be three years old in May, have brought more than £250,000 into their home town, Callander, Ontario, in the past twelve months, says the “Sunday Express.”

This is the estimate of a leading Canadian bank which has a branch in Callander.

The Quins do not take one penny of this enormous sum.

It is additional to the £50,000 earned in 1036 from contracts from film, newsreel and newspapers, and from advertisements in which their photographs appear for baby food products, toys and children's clothing.

The £250,000 goes to the owners of hotels, restaurants, teashops and carparks, to the keepers of souvenir shops and booths, and the miniature cheap amusement parks which have sprung up round the Dafoe nursery hospital which is the Quins’ home. The Quins are the principal industry of Callander. Everybody makes money out of them. One hundred thousand motor-ears and motor-coaches brought more than 500,000 visitors to Callander in 1036.

A great hotel was built three miles from the town to accommodate visitors, and the three miles of highway, to the Dafoe hospital are lined with row behind row of bungalows, ‘‘hot dog’’ stalls, souvenir shops, pin-table halls, and fortune-tellers’ booths, which make it the greatest “fun fair” in Canada. The chief attraction for visitors, a twice daily exhibition of the Quins at play, is free. All over Callander there are clock signs headed. “Next showing of Quints,” with the hands pointed at the hour when visitors are admitted through a turnstile for a three-minute glimpse of the children. They stand on a platform and look down on the Quins, who, however, are so placed that they cannot see their visitors.

The largest <if the sideshows is run by Mr. Oliva Dionne, the father of the Quins, who has never forgiven the Canadian Government for taking the Quins out of his custody, and for bank-

ing most of the money which their fame has brought them.

The Canadian Government allows Mr. and Mrs. Dionne £2O a month from the Quins’ earnings, but it is estimated that Mr. Dionne earns £2O a day from the profits of the great wooden bungalow where, with a score of assistants, he sells teas, postcards, and other souvenirs and signs his autograph at 1/a time.

Mr. Dionne himself sits in a closelycurtained room. Visitors wishing to see him must pay -/- for the privilege. Another great attraction is the large flat potato crate in which the babies were placed when they were born. It contains five wax models of newborn infants in baby clothes. The second largest sideshow is a bungalow restaurant and souvenir shop run by Mesdames Legros and Bebel, the two midwives who attended Mrs. Dionne when the Quins were born. The main attraction is a pile of stones said to have been picked up from the Quins’ playground which, it is declared, .will guarantee happy motherhood to any woman buying one.

It has been calculated that more stones have been sold than there ever were on the surface of the ground for miles round Callander, but the pile is miraculously replenished every morning.

The Canadian Government nets £30.000 a year in tax from the petrol sold Io visiting cars in and around Callander.

Preparations are in progress for an even greater rush of visitors in 1937 than 1936, Dozens of new shops aml souvenir booths are being erected, and the Ontario Government is building a new road into Callander capable of carrying a peak traffic of 2000 motor-cars every day.

The five girls made great progress mentally and physically in 1936. Yvonne, the heaviest ami tallest, weighs 2S’lb. ami is 331 in. tall. Cecile and Annette tie with a height of 33 jin. and a weight of 2Slb. Emilie weighs 261 b. and is 33in., and Marie is 241 b. and 32-Jin. They all gained approximately Bill, and 3in. in the year.