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North Bay is a vibrant city of 54,000 people, nestled between Lake Nipissing and Trout Lake. From its beginnings North Bay has been a centre of transportation. The first business in the area was carried out by canoe, and the fact that North Bay was on a system of interconnected waterways was significant during the fur-trading days. These waters provided the fastest route from Montreal through the Great Lakes and beyond.

In 1961 a new set of children’s swings for Champlain Park became the key to a major discovery of artifacts from the past. The site was immediately registered as the La Vase North Bank Archaeological Site. In August 1995 excavations of the area began as part of the Heritage North Project. In May and June 1996, Laurentian University conducted an archaeological field school that located burnt timbers and other evidence, which identified the site as the location of Fort Laronde, an historic fur-trading post.

Fort Laronde was established in the late 1700s, or early 1800s, by Eustache de Laronde, an independent Metis fur trader associated with the Northwest Company of Montreal. In 1821 the post was closed and moved to Garden Island near the Sturgeon River as a result of the merger of the Northwest Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The North Bay region was the site of several such trading posts prior to the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1882. John McIntyre Ferguson, nephew of the vice-president of the CPR, had visited the area and settled here, a year before the railway.

North Bay, V.E. Day, 1945. One of the many V.E. Day celebrations that occurred all over Ontario.

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Only a log cabin occupied the site when the CPR laid a new section of line at “the great, north bay” of Lake Nipissing. John Ferguson purchased property and played a substantial role in the development of the settlement. It was Ferguson who unintentionally gave the place its name, when he directed a shipment of building materials from Pembroke to be sent to him at the “north bay.” Ferguson served as postmaster in 1881–82, and later as mayor from 1919–22.

North Bay became a railway community with business enterprises surrounding the railway yards, including a roundhouse, coal depot, a repair station, and a few dwellings.

Jim Mulligan owned the first stores in North Bay, J.W. Richards established a tinsmithy in 1885, and John Bourke operated a steam-powered sawmill at the west end of the settlement. The following year he used his steam generator to supply a portion of North Bay with electricity.

The railway brought with it a surge of settlers and workers and, by 1890, North Bay was incorporated as a town. The community became the judicial seat of the Nipissing District in 1895.

In 1905 North Bay became the southern terminus of the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (Ontario Northland Railway). A gateway to the rich resources of the north, it had access to primary resources such as nickel, iron, copper, gold, platinum, silver, and cobalt, all of which assisted in the growth of North Bay. Rail connection soon included an extension of the Grand Trunk Railway from Gravenhurst to Lake Nipissing, and North Bay became a major distribution centre and link between northern resources and markets south.

The 1930s in North America were depression years, in every sense of the word. Money markets collapsed and crops failed; people were poor, then hungry, and after years of this, utterly without hope.

The whole continent was in the grip of a terrible malaise, and its people looked for heroes and a better tomorrow. This was the age of Shirley Temple, Charles Lindbergh, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers — and the Dionne quintuplets.

So much has been written about the Dionne quintuplets, including Pierre Berton’s excellent book, The Dionne Years. There have been movies made, and a few years ago they were in the news again, but for less positive reasons.

It all began on May 28, 1934, at about 1:00 a.m., when Elzire Dionne, the 25-year-old mother of six, told her husband, Oliva, that she wanted assistance for the delivery of her seventh baby. Two local midwives arrived and then they sent for Dr. Dafoe. The first baby was born at 4:00 a.m. By the time Dr. Dafoe had arrived, there were two. And they kept coming.

Conditions in a big city hospital at the time would have been rudimentary for such an event, compared to modern technology; here, in Corbeil, in 1934, in the Dionne’s humble farmhouse, they were woefully inadequate. Still, Canadian resourcefulness came into play. A basket was set on two chairs in front of the open oven. An eyedropper was used to give the babies warm water. Minute amounts of rum were administered every day.

Their combined weight at birth was only 13 pounds, 3 ounces. Each perfectly formed, identical baby girl weighed approximately 2.2 pounds (about one kilogram). Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, and Marie spent the first month of their lives in an incubator; miracle upon miracle, they survived. The Dionne family, and North Bay, would never be the same again.

As soon as the news was out, the Dionne family was grist for the media mill. Promoters from all over North America saw a huge opportunity and felt that a simple French-speaking family might be easy prey. By the time the “quints” were two months old, the Ontario government had made them wards of the Province, and by the time they were four months old, they were removed from their parents’ home.

“Quintland” was close to the Dionne homestead, but the Dionne parents soon had to make an appointment to see their daughters. The other siblings were denied access because Dr. Dafoe felt that children were “germ carriers.” The quintuplets had become a five-child industry.

Buildings popped up around Quintland, including souvenir stands that were operated by Oliva Dionne, with a sign that said SOUVENIRS — REFRESHMENTS, OPERATED BY PARENTS OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS BABIES. There was a nursery, a staff house, a playground building where the public could observe the quints, and an observation gallery. These children were raised in a goldfish bowl. Visitors entered the gallery in groups of 100 and viewed the children through mesh-covered windows. The compound was surrounded by mesh fencing, and police were in charge of crowd control; 3,000,000 people visited, and the line of cars sometimes stretched for 4 kilometres (2.5 miles).

So-called fertility stones lined the path to the observation platform and were free to visitors. Each morning the Ontario Department of Highways replenished the supply of stones from the shores of Lake Nipissing. Everyone needs to believe in miracles, and it appeared that the Department of Highways did, too!

The image of the girls graced, among other things, lunch boxes, serving trays, and china, and they figured prominently in print — notably, ad campaigns for all manner of food and other products, including General Motors and McCormick’s Biscuits. Dr. Dafoe ran the complex, and he and the other guardians appointed by the government determined the girls’ fate.

The town of North Bay saw the end of the bitter depression. Tourism meant prosperity to anyone who could provide accommodation, food, or souvenirs. By 1939 $2,500,000 had been spent in North Bay by those eager to see the Dionne quintuplets.

This did not come to an end until the girls were almost 10 years old! They were finally reunited with their parents, and together they moved to a new home, but with less than satisfactory results. Isolated and controlled from their earliest memory, they and their family had difficulty adjusting to a normal life together.

Emilie died in 1954, during an epileptic seizure. In 1970 Marie was found dead in her apartment; she had suffered from depression and other health problems. The surviving Dionnes publicly approached the Ontario government in the mid-1990s for a portion of the money they had earned during the 1930s. After some public pressure, the government agreed to award them $2,800,000.

Eventually, Stan Guignard, a former Canadian heavyweight boxing champion, took over the Dionne homestead. Guignard had the house moved to North Bay, where it stands today as a museum. Visitors can tour the rooms the Dionnes lived in and browse through original artifacts and paintings.

The quintets are probably North Bay’s most unusual and famous story, but it is only one story from the area. North Bay is now a major city with many government offices, a major cruise ship, Nipissing University, and Canadore College; the Northwest Trading Company has been gone since 2008. Change is ever-present, ongoing, and what we think we know today is history by tomorrow.