Podcast

Peter Handley:
Hi there and good day! Welcome to North Bay’s Heritage Diary. Listen up and we shall weave for you tales of days and times gone by, which can inform today and show the way to tomorrow. This Municipal Heritage Committee podcast looks at our town, our people and our stories. This time we open the diary of our shared past and talk to Mr. Floyd Andrick about the birth of the Dionne “Quinntups” - quintuplets, and the whole quintuplets story. They played an important role in the development of North Bay and northeastern Ontario and Mr. Andrick, as a researcher and collector, when you first hear of the Dionnes because you're not from around here?

Floyd Andrick:
No, I'm from Midland, Michigan. I first heard about them - I was about almost 7 years of age and one day I walked into the dining room of our family farmhouse north of Midland and my mother was sorting through boxes of mementos, pictures, collectibles, and there was a picture of the quintuplets when they were five years of age on a karo syrup add and looking at that picture there is five identical little girls. I asked my mother who were these girls, they all look alike. My mother explained to me that they were called quintuplets. They were all born to one mother at the same time and in trying to understand this lesson I asked, “well, mom you mean when you had me if there would have been five of us we’d be called quintuplets?” I said “gosh mom, I can’t imagine what that would be like and my mother said “no, I can't either.”

Peter Handley:
I guess. Alright, so that’s the first time. Did you follow-up or was it sort of an “okay, there’s the picture, it’s nice to know the story and then off you go to school or play ball or whatever. When did you come back to them or did you ever leave them?

Floyd Andrick:
It was a few weeks later on August 6, 1954 - my seventh birthday. Late that afternoon, we kids were sitting at the dining table having some birthday cake and the radio was on and the announcer says “we bring you a news bulletin from Canada”. Grandma shushed us kids and back then, if you were shushed by an adult, you froze - you didn’t say anything you didn't move. Pretty soon, another announcer came on and said “quintuplet Emilie Dionne died this morning in Canada” and I remember my grandmother saying “oh my gosh, oh my gosh”. It seemed, that's all everybody talked about for a couple weeks thereafter. Well then, my grandmother informed me that a relative of my family, Yvonne Leroux, who was the nurse they called in the first day - she was related to our family. So, my grandmother had followed the story and then it was shared with me subsequently all about the Quints and the family over subsequent years. So it wasn't until 1963 in the fall was 16 at the time. McCall’s Magazine came out with the instalment of ‘We Were Five’ well I read those – well it came out in two separate issues.

Peter Handley:
McCall’s is a magazine just in case anybody doesn’t remember because that goes back a way.

Floyd Andrick:
Okay, well I guess you know, I'm reading through that and I was so taken aback how the parents were ridiculed for doing what they thought was best and right for their daughters and I wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Dionne - a sympathetic letter to them. Then, over the next few years for a and I wrote subsequently and it…

Peter Handley:
Did you get answers?

Floyd Andrick:
Umm… Christmas cards and I still have the Christmas card in 1965 that the parents invited me to visit them.

Peter Handley:
Okay. This is well after the days of the compound. We’re back together again.

Floyd Andrick:
Yes. So then, in June of 1966 when I finished my first year of college, a friend and I decided to go on a fishing trip to Canada but I wanted to come to Callander, Ontario. I wanted to see world is happened. So it was then that I met the parents and we just developed a great friendship. I was welcomed into their home and stayed there at the home many times over the years. I visited them once, twice a year, every year after that up until 1984 when Mama Dionne's health was poor and their daughter, Pauline – and Pauline and I were very close, she and I spent hours and hours together with her sharing about what happened years ago. Well Pauline commented that “no Floyd, we are going to have to limit visitors just to immediate family” and out of respect for Mrs. Dionne and the family, I fully understood.

Peter Handley:
The daughters were not here at the time, right? The four remaining Quints were not around?

Floyd Andrick:
They were in Montréal. So I didn't visit at all from ‘84 through to ‘87 after Mrs. Dionne had passed away, which was November 22, 1986.

Peter Handley:
But meanwhile you were doing stuff on this? You were collecting material – both information and items I guess?

Floyd Andrick:
Yes. I would go to flea markets and any kind of a public sale. I picked up scrapbooks and all kinds of memorabilia on the family. So, I would buy these things and gosh I have two file full and some dresser drawers - I have a tremendous amount of memorabilia on the family.

Peter Handley:
Okay, when you were growing up and starting to get a real interest in the Dionne’s, did you know anyone else who gave a hoot?

Floyd Andrick:
Oh yes. Well, my grandmother especially because she had followed them via radio right because it was on the radio consistently about them and back then in the 50s they were still pretty heavily on the news. So I mean I often would hear people comment about the Dionne Quintuplets. Then in ’63 when they came out with ‘We Were Five’, of course, they were on the front page again.

Peter Handley:
Did you ever meet Ms. Leroux? The nurse Yvonne Leroux?

Floyd Andrick:
Yes, in 1970 I had an opportunity to speak with her, and I remember asking her about when she first walked into the farmhouse on the afternoon of May 28, 1934. She shared that she walked in and the two midwifes, Mme. Legros and Mme. Labelle were sitting on kitchen chairs in front of the kitchen range and had the five babies in the butchers basket on the oven door to keep them warm. Yvonne said she walked up and she first heard kittens and she wondered why would they have kittens in the house and she walked up. She looked over Mme. Labelle’s shoulder and here in this basket were five little faces the size of apples and Yvonne said to herself ‘what an introduction to nursing.’ This was her first case – she had just graduated as an RN. She said Mme. Legros departed shortly after and Mme. Labelle stayed till around 8:30 that evening because they had been there all night and all day and Yvonne said that night she lost track of the number of times that first night when one baby would stop breathing she would pick it up, give it a couple puffs of air and then another would stop so she’d pick that one of the basket, give it a couple puffs of air and that went on all night. Dr. Defoe came back around 7 AM the next morning and Yvonne was… Well, her nerves were getting a bit shattered at that time and and she said “doctor, what am I going to do? I can't keep all of them breathing.” She said he went out to his car and he brought in a bottle of rum. She had been feeding them with an eyedropper okay. They boiled some cow's milk and then a little karo syrup and water and she would feed them a few drops of it.

Peter Handley:
Karo Syrup? What is that?

Floyd Andrick:
It’s a corn syrup.

Peter Handley:
Okay, like Bee Hive Golden Corn Syrup?

Floyd Andrick:
That's right. Very good. Okay so she would give them a few drops of rum and she said they would spark right back to life. They would pink right up. I regret that I never thought to ask Yvonne, during that week of all that stress and tension, how many times did you tip the bottle?

Peter Handley:
Did she say anything about Dr. Defoe at all? He’s a prime figure in this whole melodrama isn’t he?

Floyd Andrick:
I don't recall her, in that short time that I spoke with her, any reference to Defoe.

Peter Handley:
Pierre Berton wrote a book in the late 70s – “The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama” and he has a neat picture of the doctor with an oversize hat on his head and his quote was, if I can remember it, was “he never found a hat big enough to fit him”. I thought after looking into it and realizing he had more than double meaning in that little quote… So, does that fit with what you found out about him in your collecting material and so on?

Floyd Andrick:
Okay, well, stepping back just a bit. She did mention Dr. Defoe - that he was the one that called her that day at St. Joseph's Hospital in North Bay and asked her to gather whatever she could for supplies for a premature delivery and get out to the home of Olivia Dionne as quickly as she could. That was the only reference in that time that I spoke with her that she made to Defoe - that he was the one that called her. Back to Defoe on the size of his head, well that could be taken two ways because in pictures he didn't have an oversized head, but then of course all the fame all the notoriety of being this obscure country doctor…

Peter Handley:
Must've been tough to handle.

Floyd Andrick:
No doubt, very much so. Cause he was… He took comfort in being basically a backwoodsman here in Callander Ontario. When he graduated, he didn't want to go to a big city hospital. Although his brother, Will, was so head of a big hospital in Toronto - Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto and then Will became an advisor to the Doctor’s younger brother Roy Defoe about the Quints.

Peter Handley:
When you were learning about this whole story, what was your reaction when you found out that the government sort of took the kids and put them into a display?

Floyd Andrick:
Well, initially when the government took custody I think it was July 24, 1936 or ’34 - it was to be for two years. Initially the government wanted custody for 18 years, but the parents adamantly objected and said “we can’t give up our children for 18 years” and so it was negotiated back and forth. Finally, the government officials relented that it would be for two years. So the parents agreed to that thinking, “in two years, we’ll get the girls back, their health will be insured and they will never know anything happened to them”. But, of course, two years later in 1936, the big observatory had been built - thousands of people were coming, in fact, 6000 came on Labor Day 1936. Ontario was making millions of dollars off the Quints. When the parents protested that the two-year agreement was up, the government paid them a deaf ear thinking that they were just a couple farm folks. They had no power. So now the parents fought the government for another seven years and the girls were nine years old before they really received custody and by that time they had been raised as royalty… as princesses. Then, on November 17, 1943 when they moved into the big house, which was built next door… mixing royalty with a farm family… you can imagine that that’s not going to work very well.

Peter Handley:
Do you see a hero or villain in this whole story?

Floyd Andrick:
That's a good question and I don't have a good answer.

Peter Handley:
Okay. It's… you can see… you can see political aspects and you can see conflict all the way through it even among the villages and the French/English situation because Defoe was English and everybody else in the inner circle was French and the priest was involved… Did the family ever recovered from it?

Floyd Andrick:
No, they never did. Even late in life, the parents grieved over the loss of their daughters – not only the physical loss but the emotional loss. I remember one time, I think that was about June 1970 when I was visiting the parents, we were sitting in the living room and a car pulled up the driveway quite close to the house and Mama Dionne looked out and they had a little white dog and the dog started barking and Mama Dionne said to the dog, “Is it Annette? Is it Cecile? Is it Yvonne?” I think it was just deep down, wishful thinking that maybe one of the daughters were coming back.

Peter Handley:
Because when they left, they left right? You’ve done some research on this… is there any answer that comes to your mind as to why or is it just one of those things… it’s a family matter, leave it alone?

Floyd Andrick:
I think it goes back to those initial years of being raised as royalty for the first nine years and then moving in with their siblings and parents. Of course, there had to be animosity there in that these five were raised in luxurious circumstances and the other children were raised in the normal family farm. There had to be animosity and I'm sure the Quints felt that as did the non-Quint siblings. I think, you know, when they turned 18 after they graduated, which was on their 18th birthday May 28, 1952, then the course they were off to Montréal to colleges and convents and I think that maybe going back to the nursery days where they were regarded as special… Maybe they wanted a private life and they were thinking that going off to Montréal to college and convents, they could mingle with other children who were raised in normal circumstances, and maybe they could attain obscurity.

Peter Handley:
You put it nicely – obscurity. I got here in ‘58 and a couple of years later, Roy Thompson bought the TV station and working at the TV station was Vic Dionne. He was the only member of the Dionne family that I ever met, but nobody ever went after Vic or talked about the family or anything – it wasn’t verboten but you just didn’t do it. You left him alone. So, I don't know what it would be like for the family and it may must've been a most trying number of years… You've mentioned visiting the home, were they living in the compound at the time?

Floyd Andrick:
No, they moved out of the mansion home in 1960 and the parents built a brick ranch just west of the big house - Probably about 200 yards to the west. That’s where they spent the rest of their lives and that's where I first met them and would visit that was the location.

Peter Handley:
The material you've got. Did you find anything, and where did you do your research by way?

Floyd Andrick:
Primarily when I was going to Delta College – they had multiple sets of encyclopedias. There was a lot of information in there. The library had a little information but it was the primary avenue of research was encyclopedias back then.

Peter Handley:
When did you start collecting?

Floyd Andrick:
Well, actually it began when I was seven years of age and the my grandmother informed…

Peter Handley:
That story really affected you didn’t it?

Floyd Andrick:
It really did for some reason.

Peter Handley:
Did the fact that your grandmother was related to the nurse… Did that occur to you?

Floyd Andrick:
I think that's likely it and supposedly grandmother and Yvonne Leroux had corresponded and subsequently when my grandmother passed away when my aunts were sorting out all of her papers and everything I was hoping that perhaps it would find some of that correspondence but unfortunately by the time I got home from school they had already burned a great deal of papers and letters and everything. Then, after I got home from school, I was instructed to take this large cardboard box of documents and everything – pictures etc. out to the burn pile. Well, I did not obey. I took all those things and we have the woodshed and it had an upstairs so my grandfather's record books and family ancestral photos - I guess my aunts didn't see any value in those things so I took everything. I took the empty box back in and they said, “did you get all that out there?” and I said “oh yeah”. I didn't tell them what I did with it.

Peter Handley:
That was smart of you. But you’ve got stuff about your family now that would have been gone. Now, the collecting, when did that start? Were you interested in collecting the Dionne dolls?

Floyd Andrick:
No, I never had any interest in the dolls. Fellow collectors, you know, they have many sets of those but I guess being a guy that didn't interest me in the least. Primarily paper items around newspapers, magazines, books – that’s mostly what I have. I have a few 3D items like the chrome cereal bowl I brought along on this trip and an 11 inch tall carving by Swedish artist Johan Trigg of Madame Legros with a basket with the five babies in it. I understand that was made in 1936 and he only made one and fortunately I have it.

Peter Handley:
Well that’s nice! Where were you going with this and what did you do to make a living?

Floyd Andrick:
I was tri-vocational for 28 years, meaning that I did three professions for 28 years. I was a surgical technician at our hospital - specialized in orthopedics. I owned a business and I was a property developer – I was a landlord and had many rental properties. I have gradually sold them all off and I’m down to the 14 properties from 22. So, at age 50, realizing my net worth at the time, which I usually don't share but I was very comfortable financially and decided well, I guess it's time to retire and that was 22 years ago and I've been working ever since - primarily as a volunteer. I’m the board chairman of three organizations primarily for senior services. I enjoy giving back and helping the seniors even though I am one.

Peter Handley:
The seniors that you are dealing with… If you throw the Dionne Quints at them as a topic today – do they go blank or do they know what you’re talking about?

Floyd Andrick:
They know exactly what I'm talking about. Take someone 40-50 years of age when I mention this –“who were they? what are they?” Young people never heard of such a thing and when I apprise them of it all they say, “well, that's interesting” and I say, “well, go on Google and type in Dionne Quintuplets. You will be amazed at what you find”.

Peter Handley:
There’s a difference between a hobby and obsession – where is it with you?

Floyd Andrick:
I think it's a hobby. I know it could be borderline obsession. One of my other interests, which is the Titanic – I get accused of being obsessed. I knew personally 14 survivors so that has been a lifelong hobby as well. It's taken me all over the world.

Peter Handley:
Okay, then you must have been interested when they went down with… I forget the gentleman's name.

Floyd Andrick:
Dr. Robert Ballard.

Peter Handley:
Yeah, Ballard – right. Do you wish you were him?

Floyd Andrick:
He offered me… Well back in 1987, I organized and hosted the 75 year anniversary of the Titanic sinking. We had nine survivors attend, Dr. Robert Ballard was our guest speaker and we accommodated him royally. So, he said, “Floyd, we’re going down again next year, would you like to go?” and I said, “Robert, thank you, just call me chicken of the sea.” Getting in that little sub, freefalling for three hours to get down 12,600 feet… I said “I couldn’t do it.” I said, “if you can anesthetize me, put me on the sub and get me down there then snap me out of the anesthesia and let me see the ship, but then set me back under….”. But no, I couldn’t do it.

Peter Handley:
So you're attracted to… I used the term before – melodrama, but soap operas. I mean the time the Titanic and the Dionne's both have that in common don’t they?

Floyd Andrick:
Disaster.

Peter Handley:
Yeah, that’s another term. It was a disaster. Thank you for coming in and talking with us. It's been fascinating talking to you. What are you going to do next?

Floyd Andrick:
Well, I keep thinking about retirement but I don't think that's going to happen hopefully another 10, 15 maybe 20 years. I enjoy everything I'm doing. I love being active. Giving back… I mean, society is been good to me and I have been very successful. It’s been a lot of hard work, but I love giving back. I love sharing.

Peter Handley:
Excellent. Researcher and collector in the Dionne world: Floyd Andrick – our guest. Thank you for spending some time with us and listening to our stories. These productions are put together by the Municipal Heritage Committee not only to retell old tales, but hopefully to kindle interest in area history. Local lore is important to any community and we shouldn't let it go unremarked and unremembered. Views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of the Corporation of the City of North Bay or its employees. Join us next time when we flip another page of the diary of our shared past. You can reach us at peter.carello@cityofnorthbay.ca. Production – Kealey Ducharme. Pete Handley speaking.