For Darlene Dolinski, life is like a trail ride on a spirited horse that sometimes threatens to throw her.
The early loss of her father, a teenage pregnancy, divorce, financial stress, a health scare, business setbacks - they've made the path slippery for this determined entrepreneur.
Self-reliant and determined, Darlene Dolinski built Copall Equestrian Centre against long odds.
But sharing the ride are two rugged and resourceful horsewomen - her mother and her daughter - who watch her back and help navigate the trail ahead.
There will be bouquets going in several directions today as the three generations celebrate Mother's Day.
Dolinski, 52, is the hard-driving owner of Copall Equestrian Centre, Manitoba's largest riding facility. She's the kind of ultra-capable woman who can subdue a stallion, supervise a construction project and dissect a balance sheet - all before lunch.
Copall (the Irish Gaelic word for "Horse") is located on 70 acres just south of the Perimeter Highway in St. Norbert. It's the only local equestrian center with two indoor riding arenas, each the size of a hockey arena.
It's a year-round school that trains more than 250 students per week, holds summer camps and horse shows, and aspires to turn out Olympic champions. It's also a full-service boarding facility whose state-of-the-art barn is home to 45 horses.
How determined was Dolinski to build this dream?
In 1992, when she bought the land, it didn't even have a pond to water the animals, let alone the more than 60,000 square feet of indoor space it has now.
Having already run a successful riding school for 10 years, Dolinski went looking for a $500,000 loan to build the facility. But such an ambitious stable was unknown in Manitoba, and loan managers thought a single woman was a poor risk as sole proprietor.
"I was refused 16 times because I was a woman," she says.
Finally, at Niverville Credit Union she found a manager willing to lend her $250,000. Determined to succeed in spite of the shortfall, Dolinski actually lived in the rough-built upstairs viewing area of the first arena.
"I put curtains on the windows, insulated it separately, put a little bed in there, my TV, a hotplate, and lived in there for almost three years," she remembers.
Her frugal, self-reliant mom, Sheila, never loaned her money, but supported her aspirations.
"I told her to go ahead and do whatever she felt she had to do," says the spunky Sheila, 73, who keeps 10 miniature horses on her own property in Charleswood. "Being a woman, you have to work twice as hard."
Dolinski says she gets her stubborn nature from her mom, as well as her business savvy and her cautious approach to spending money.
Sheila, who has a retail background, has owned and operated Copall's on-site Mor Tack Shop for the past decade, leasing the space from her daughter.
Meanwhile, Dolinski's only child, 35-year-old Christina (Chris), who grew up as a talented dressage and Arabian competitor, is Copall's office manager and head instructor.
About six years ago, Dolinski eased out of the day-to-day running of the business and handed the reins to Chris. Among the younger woman's priorities is making sure the stable is up-to-date with technology.
"The horse assignments are all done on computer," Chris says. "We even take lesson cancellations by text-messaging now, and communicate with our barn staff through text-messaging."
There's a close bond between grandmother and granddaughter. "I rely on Chris an awful lot for input (on ordering merchandise)," says Sheila.
"It's just because you're not web-savvy," teases Chris.
Dolinski admits that there are "power pulls" between her and Chris, often mediated by grandma Sheila. "I pull rank," she says. "Sometimes I eat crow."
These days, Dolinski lives in a mobile home on the Copall property, and so do Chris and her husband Shawn, the facility manager. It keeps them all close to the horses in case of a late-night emergency.
Today is the first Mother's Day for Chris, whose 11-week-old son, Chase, comes to work with her in the school office. The baby is already accustomed to large dogs, barn cats, and the constant smell of horses. "He's definitely going to be a horse person," says his great-grandma Sheila.
Sheila, the daughter of an Irish blacksmith, grew up around horses. Her husband Edward was a truck driver. Unbeknownst to the trucking company, in the 1950s Sheila sometimes drove the semi to let her husband catch up on sleep.
When they started a trailer and camper business in Neepawa, Sheila ran the upholstery side and taught herself to repair industrial sewing machines.
When Dolinski was just 14 and her brother 10, Edward died. At 16, Dolinski got pregnant but stubbornly refused to let small-town shame stop her from completing Grade 12. "I was the first girl that stayed in school in Neepawa, pregnant," she remembers.
A social worker almost convinced her to give up her daughter for adoption. Instead, she kept the baby, moved to Winnipeg, took computer training, and eventually landed a job at MTS.
It was a struggle. But she never stopped training horses and riders - her passion since childhood. Even when Chris was a toddler, Dolinski had a small stable in Charleswood and gave lessons. "Chris would be in her playpen in the middle of the corral, and I would ride around her."
Sheila's self-reliance and horse sense rubbed off on Dolinski. Once during those years, her eight horses were sick with colic and she had no money to pay a vet. So she turned to a 100-year-old farming book that her mom had given her. She mixed turpentine and milk, forced it down the animals' throats, and cured them.
Dolinski stayed at MTS for about seven years. In the 1980s she got married, and with her husband founded Rivercrest Stables in Lorette.
She knocked herself out to polish her riding style and earn national certification as an equestrian coach. She slowly started to gain acceptance in the riding community, which is dominated by women with silver-spoon upbringings.
"This is a female sport . . . an elitist sport," she says matter-of-factly. "The first big stable (here) was owned by the Richardsons."
When her 10-year marriage ended in divorce, Dolinski bought the current land in St. Norbert. In 1997, when she still had only a tarp barn and was sleeping in the arena, the Flood of the Century hit. Thinking at first that her site would be spared, she was sheltering other farmers' livestock when she got a sudden order to evacuate more than 60 animals in 12 hours.
With helpers, including her mother and daughter, Dolinski tore the insulation out of the main floor of the arena to save it from water damage. She fled with the animals to Birds Hill, where she had to camp for a month so she could keep bringing in revenue from lessons.
Copall slowly expanded, to the point of boarding 98 horses, and grew more profitable. But Dolinski faced her greatest obstacle in 2000, when the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) audited her. She was told that the riding coaches she had been paying as self-employed contractors were actually employees, and that she owed the government more than $60,000 in unpaid EI and CPP contributions.
"This arrogant auditor made me feel like garbage," she says. "I'm not a government lover."
The tax investigation became a financial and personal nightmare. Her reputation was damaged, she says, even though there was no proof of any wrongdoing. Three of her senior coaches quit, taking more than 50 clients with them. She was forced to downsize. The government cleaned out her bank accounts.
"We were just flattened," she says. "The collection agencies were on top of me."
Not a soul in the local equine community was brave enough to rally around her, she adds.
But Dolinski became radicalized. She was determined to fight the tax judgment which, if it stood, would set a precedent for the riding-school industry.
She discovered a service called Pre-Paid Legal and joined up. Against her accountant's advice, she hired prominent lawyer Norm Cuddy and they spent nine stressful months preparing her appeal. At the same time, she was going through a lung-cancer scare.
It was the first time she had ever shown weakness to her daughter, she says. "When she watched me crumble, that was hard on her. And I was worse inside than I let her know."
Finally, in 2002 the CRA backed down, saying that the riding coaches did, in fact, qualify as contractors. The judgment was reversed. But the experience permanently affected Dolinski. She turned most of the business over to her daughter and son-in-law and started trying to protect other business owners by selling Pre-Paid Legal's services, calling herself a "poster girl" for the company. She has also become a consultant who advises business owners on matters such as identity theft and privacy law, and a broker who connects would-be sellers and buyers of companies.
She says she can see a clear Dolinski legacy from mother, to daughter, to granddaughter.
"We're practical mothers . . . multi-taskers. I think sometimes we intimidate men, all of us. My mom always did, I remember that. Men would actually get angry with her, because women were supposed to be silent housekeepers and she never played that role.
"Now, men are a little more politically correct. They just say I'm strong-minded," she laughs. "I know what they mean. And then, my daughter, the same thing. She's a very strong-natured person."
alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca
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