Thanks To The Dionne Quintuplets

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 75, 29 November 1940, Page 5

Thanks To The Dionne Quintuplets

Since the birth of the Dionne quintuplets, the little way-back, almost abandoned lumber town of Callander, Ontario, has changed from a scattering of houses, a small hotel, and a general store, where upwards of 800 people were on relief, and where taxes were thousands of doilars in arrears, to a place where taxes are paid up and the only persons on relief are those who are unemployed because of age or sickness. Callander hotels have now accommodation for 1,500 people. Along the once empty highway more than four miles of tourist cabins have been built. A parcel of land which changed hands in 1933 at 200 dollars in now worth 5,000. Visitors to Callander average 3,000 people each week-day with upwards of 8,000 at week-ends. The quintuplets are very rich young ladies, but compared with the fortunes they have made for hotel-keepers, merchants, and other business-like people, their fortune is quite modest. They have 14 people on their pay roll, Two nurses, three policemen, two maids, a housekeeper and a cook, Dr. Datoe himself, a business manager, the secretarytreasurer of the Board of Guardians, and Dr. Dafoe’s secretary. Dr. Datoe, by the way, has always refused to take more than 200 dollars a month, so that the rumours which have been circulated about his vast fortune seem to be slightly exaggerated.-(" Isobel," " More Bits and Pieces,’ 2YA, November 14.)