EIGHT YEARS OLD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 12, 4 February 1942, Page 2

EIGHT YEARS OLD

DIONNE QUINTUPLETS

ALL LEARNING MUSIC

A "privileged hour" spent with the Dionne quintuplets at their logbuilt Da foe nursery in the snowcovered Christmas tree countryside at Corbeil, near Callender, Ontario, their home, is described in the following article by a correspondent of the Daily Mirror. The five little girls, dressed in brown rompers and fur-lined bonnets, were shovelling snow with five small spades in the nursery grounds in sub-zero temperature when I arrived at the wire-enclosed grounds where three uniformed and armed policemen of the Ontario Provincial Police keep a day and night watch over Canada's famous children. In their little parlour hang five framed birth certificates, coloured pictures of the children at various «iges, and pictures of the whole family of eleven children with their parents. Five little dark-haired girls were Mien ushered in with their nurse and fair-hai.rcd 11 year old Pauline, their sister, and their brother Victor, one of two boys born since the quintuplets. Five little girls, still lovely though grown out of baby looks, wore red frocks, white shoes, w-hite stockings and red ribbons on dark plaits. Eight in May The nurse told me they are all over four feet high, have all been made Girl Guides, and will be eight in May. Each has a little piano and all are learning music, Annette having shown real talent.

They all sang little songs in French for me, bowed gravcy after their performance, then "retired to their bedroom. The other children live Avith their parents 011 the opposite side of the country read at the farm, where all were born, but which has been improved and modernised. No one is allowed to photograph the children, as their interests are tied up commercially and they are now worth £250,000. All look sturdy and healthy and in their bedroom they relaxed, jumping oyer beds and hiding between curtains and behaving as mischievously as kittens. All are alike as five peas. They are .soon to letfl-n English, of which they speak only a few words. The children are very adorable, and they pressed five little faces to the windows of the nursery 'home, waving, as they watched me leave.