Like most Americans (or so I assume), I grew up thinking of Canada’s government as sort of a benign, agreeable uncle with a funny accent. So it was rather disturbing when I discovered that the first set of identical, natural-birth quintuplets to survive their infancy were in fact seized by the Canadian government in 1935, when the girls were one. Their doctor was given guardianship and they were put in “Quintland”–a tourist attraction that rivaled the Niagara Falls for popularity and that CNN called a depression-era freak show. According to the Wikipedia entry on the sisters, an average of 6,000 visitors came to observe the quints every day and the hospital/zoo brought in $51 million in tourist revenue to the area–during the depression. Even when the Dionne quints’ father successfully regained custody of his daughters in 1943 he continued to display and exploit them. In 1998, the remaining sisters were awarded $4 million by the Ontario government in compensation for their nine years on display (after a long and harrowing suit, of course).
Below are two pictures of Quintland from postcards. While the Wikipedia article is certainly more reliable and less…informal?…there’s also an interesting, if…unpolished and editorial…site here about Quintland with many pictures.