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Once an important stopping point on the canoe route to the west and now a useful place to break your journey on the long drive north, the workaday city of NORTH BAY , some 160km from Bracebridge , is a relative giant hereabouts with a population of 56,000. Glued to the shores of Lake Nipissing, it has one notable attraction, the Dionne Quints Museum , by the information centre where Hwy 11 hits the south side of town (daily: late May to June 9am-5pm; July-Aug 9am-7pm; Sept to mid-Oct 9am-4pm; $2.75). The museum is housed in the small log cabin from Corbeil, just west of North Bay, where the Dionne quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934 - to this day the world's only identical quintuplets. Kept alive with drops of whiskey, the quins were considered miracle children by the economically depressed nation, and at the age of three months the government took custody of them, removing them from their parents and five brothers and sisters. Until they were nine years old, the quins were put on display in a glassed-in playground, to the delight of up to 6000 sightseers who turned up each day to watch them and to pay for souvenirs such as "birth-promoting" stones picked up from the North Bay area. The girls were educated in a synthetic "normal school atmosphere" provided by ten classmates, five of whom were English to help the quins with their second language. This bizarre childhood eventually caused a highly publicized estrangement between the quins and their parents, and doubtless contributed to the unhappiness of their later lives, a story dominated by illness, depression and failed marriages. The three surviving quins - Yvonne, Annette and Cecile - now live in Quebec and published a biography accusing their father of sexual abuse, their mother of verbal abuse and the Ontario government of exploitation. The small museum contains dresses, toys, photographs, advertising hoardings and souvenirs of the quins' childhood, including the bed they were born in.
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