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The death of Cecile Dionne this week has the Dionne Quints Heritage Board scrambling to put together something to honour the famous sister during North Bay's centennial weekend celebrations.
Ed Valenti, who is president of the board, told BayToday that her death was not surprising, given her state of health.
"I knew that Cecile was not in the the best of health. She was struggling you know, but it's still sad."
See: Cécile, of Dionne Quintuplets passes at 91
He feels especially bad for her surviving sister Annette.
"Now all of a sudden, she's all by herself. She's the only one left of all the Dionne's 14 kids. She's the only one who still survives."
The Dionne Quints Home Museum, located at North Bay's waterfront, is the birthplace of the quintuplets, born in 1934 in Corbeil to Oliva and Elzire Dionne.
It is offering free admission to the museum during the North Bay Homecoming Festival this weekend, and now wants to do something special to honour Cecile says Valenti.
"The board just was informed of it this morning. So we're just working on some ideas and but at this time it's still pending, but we're gonna do something." Valenti hopes to have something up on the group's Facebook page later today. He says he's spent much of the morning taking phone calls from various media outlets.
Valenti never got the chance to meet Cecile, but is travelling to Montreal in the next couple of weeks and had hoped to meet her then.
"The strange part is I was hoping to see Cecile, but I'm hoping to still meet Annette. It may not happen because Annette is struggling as well. But I'm gonna go up and we're bringing some stuff up. It'll be under different circumstances now."
Events like this often trigger more donations to the museum.
Six years ago a Canadian living in California contacted the museum. She developed a fascination for the Quints at a young age and had been collecting artifacts nearly all her life. She wanted to donate her entire collection.
"We had a big donation from a lady from Sacramento, and it was a huge collection. It's hard to say how much she had spent over the years, but she she told me it was quite a bit. And that was just a complete donation. And when that happened, it got carried in the news."
"And then all of a sudden...donations. We're getting stuff. We get calls once, twice a week or emails saying 'I have stuff to donate.'"
Valenti says a lot of donated things are similar, but they do get unique pieces.
"That's why we never tell people not to send. If you'd like to donate, we we gladly accept it and keep expanding. So then maybe we can have some items at different areas in the city, and special bookcases or something like that. That's our next goal, put a few of the items out to some different places like local businesses."
It was only a few years ago that the City almost lost the museum entirely. Plans were being made to move the building back to Corbeil, or even Sundridge,
See: Quints decision "It all comes down to money"
And: Dionne home relocation to downtown park approved by Heritage North Bay
"The thing is, there's a good story, though. Cecile went national in the news, from what I've been told, that was what flipped the decision with the city. They realized it would have been a huge mistake."
See: Keep our home intact, Dionne sisters plead to city council
"I can't believe we were even thinking about getting rid of it. It just amazes me, especially this year, because we're getting a lot of unique visits from people. We're asking the question all the time now. 'What brought you to North Bay?' And they say. 'I came here for this, but I'm gonna stay a few days or a few nights. Check everything out.'"
Valenti says the real interest nowadays is from the children of seniors who've always talked about, or had collections.
"So the kids are starting to come through, I mean, they're not kids anymore, they're in their fifties, but they're coming through saying, 'My grandmother and my mother always talked about it. And I wanna see what this was all about.'