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Cathryn Zeglinski: Walking the talk

“My mountain bike is worth more than my car…” – Dr Cathryn Zeglinski She grew up skiing on the side of a riverbank. Weathered the frigid Manitoba winters of her youth to eventually be crowned provincial ski champ there.
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“My mountain bike is worth more than my car…”

– Dr Cathryn Zeglinski

She grew up skiing on the side of a riverbank. Weathered the frigid Manitoba winters of her youth to eventually be crowned provincial ski champ there. But even as a teenager Cathryn Zeglinski knew she’d never become the true prairie girl her mother wanted her to be. “I always dreamed of living in the mountains,” says the founder and director of Whistler’s groundbreaking Northlands Medical Clinic. She pauses for a few beats. Her smile reveals just a hint of her maverick side. “Mountains create their own world,” she explains. “They have their own rules; their own ways of dealing with things. And that’s always intrigued me.”

Seems that Zeglinski has always been fascinated by rules and limits — and how far she can push them. In many ways, her story is a classic Canadian tale of challenges met and obstacles overcome. “My dad is an immigrant from Poland,” she tells me. “He was a child of World War II. You know, living in a mud hut and cooking over a dung fire. My mum is a third-generation prairie girl. Comes from tough farming stock that stretches right back to the Red River days. We grew up on the outskirts of Winnipeg.” She laughs. “And if you can survive the cold there, you can survive just about anything.”

She was the family tomboy, adds the lifelong athlete. A kid who virtually lived for outdoor adventures. “In fact, until I was 12, most people thought I was a boy,” she says. “There were no restrictions. You see, my dad convinced me when I was quite young that I could achieve whatever I set my mind to. And that gave me a unique perspective on life. It made me a far more resilient person, I think.”

No question. It also nurtured a daunting work ethic in Zeglinski. Medical practitioner, entrepreneur, researcher, mother, spouse, high performance athlete — there isn’t much that Cathryn does that isn’t done at a very high level. “I try to live by what I preach,” says the oldest female competitor at this year’s gruelling La Ruta de los Conquistadores mountain bike stage race in Costa Rica. “For me, there’s no such thing as: ‘I can’t.’ It’s all about going out there and doing what you have to do to make it happen.”

Which is why Whistler appeals so much to her. “Whistler is full of crazy, talented, outgoing people who keep pushing each other to reach the next level,” she explains. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re on a bike or on skis or on whatever — people exceed their limits every day around here. Just think of the Loonie race series, the costume events, the high-spirited camaraderie while fighting it out tooth and nail for the victory. .. . How could you not love a community like Whistler?”

And for the fourth or fifth time in our conversation she tells me: “Do you know that I can step outside my house and jump on my bike or on my cross-country skis and be out on the trails in seconds? To me, that’s magical.”

To say that Cathryn is merely enthusiastic about outdoor pursuits would be doing her a disservice. She’s positively messianic about them. Or maniacal, take your pick. “Sport is the fountain of youth,” she says. “It’s a way of empowering yourself to do things that you’d never dare do normally. It encourages you to go beyond what you’re comfortable with; to scare yourself. And then to realize just how free that makes you …”

Take her trip to Costa Rica this fall. “I’d just finished a month of really tough local racing,” says Zeglinski. “So I figured: ‘what the heck? I’ve been racing against some pretty serious competition at home. Let’s see what I can do at a big international event.’” Another laugh. “The Ruta was a brutal experience,” she says. “That’s why it felt like such a big accomplishment to actually finish the race.” The fact that she placed among the top 10 women there was just the icing on the cake, she says. “I mean, there were a lot of times when I just wanted to throw up my hands and quit…”

Quitting doesn’t seem to play a big part in Zeglinski’s life however. Nor does she have a lot of time for fools. Which, in a community like Whistler, is bound to ruffle feathers now and again. While some people (her clients included) love her to bits, others, well… let’s just say there are folks in the community who find Cathryn’s forthright attitude a touch challenging. And yet everyone is quick to acknowledge her warrior spirit. “This is a woman,” say both friends and critics, “who is not afraid to go after what she wants.”

It’s a trait she’s possessed all her life. Whether as a rookie member of the Canadian cycling team attending the 1987 Tour de France Feminin — “it was amazing to ride into Paris and under the Arc de Triomphe,” she says nostalgically — or following her paternal aunt into medical school — “she was one of only two women in her graduating class,” she explains — Zeglinski has always marched to the beat of her own drummer. And it’s a beat that has a very high tempo.

This is how she explains it: “People say: ‘Oh! You’re so lucky to be a physician at Whistler.’ And that’s fine and I understand where they’re coming from. But they don’t know how hard I worked to get here.” Zeglinski smiles; still, there’s a certain defensiveness to her tone. “You know it’s not all that easy to watch your friends go out and play while you stay inside and study. Damn hard in fact. But earning my medical degree also gave me the satisfaction of knowing that I was able to accomplish big goals.”

Zeglinski earned her medical stripes at the University of Manitoba, but decided to do her residency at UBC. An older colleague of hers, Dr. Hugh Fisher, was practising up in Pemberton at the time and was desperate for help (see Alta States, July 24, 15.30). The young resident happily answered his call. “Suddenly I found myself commuting from Kitsilano to Pemberton twice a week,” she says. “There was no lifestyle element attached to it however. When I was in Pemberton I was strictly a doctor. I was there to work.”

The year was 1993. Zeglinski was 29 years old. “Pemberton was really raw in those days,” she says with a near-giggle. “Pretty much the only place I could eat — other than at the Pem Ho — was at the PetroCan.” And then she does laugh. “I remember hearing that this new restaurant, The Pony Espresso, was going to open soon. Espresso? Good coffee? I couldn’t wait for it to open.”

Eventually her passion for self-improvement led her south. “I worked in a two-year fellowship program in sports medicine in the state of Utah,” she explains. “I was based in Park City, lived right at the base of Deer Valley.” She stops speaking. “I missed Whistler like crazy! Even though Park City was a nice place and everything, I realized that I could never live there permanently. The mountains just didn’t do it for me. I missed the wildness of Whistler too much. The big peaks, the glaciers, the crazy weather. I also missed Whistler’s irreverent attitude, the sense that all possibilities existed there …”

Her residency completed, Zeglinski moved north again to Vancouver to work in her new specialty. “Whistler was really where I wanted to be,” she says, “so I arranged to work here one day a week.” She laughs. “And I just kept nibbling away at it. One small step after another. For seven years I worked in other people’s practices. I slept on friends’ floors; did whatever I had to do. Finally I decided it was time to make my move.”

In September of 2005, Zeglinski launched her Northlands Medical Clinic. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she admits. “My son was only three. The business challenges were enormous.” She pauses. “I think there were a lot of questions in the community about me at first. ‘Is she committed?’ ‘Is she here for the long term?’ People didn’t know. But I’ve got to say — I received a lot of support from my patients… and now I think I’ve answered most of those questions in the affirmative.”

Her goal in starting the clinic, she says, was simply “to provide services to Whistler that weren’t there before. You see, any doctor can treat a broken bone. That’s fairly straightforward. But what’s more telling is how a doctor will help a patient deal with the impact of that fracture on his life. That to me is what 21 st century medicine is all about.”

She continues: “I’m not afraid to take risks,” she says. “I’m not afraid to break rules and try new things, to be creative and innovative, if it’s going to help my patients live a better quality of life.” She sighs. “But you can’t force change. All you can do is encourage people to make small adjustments to the way they do things until they can look back and see just how monumental those changes have become.”

In an interesting twist to the story, Zeglinski was able to invite her former mentor, Hugh Fisher, to join her at the clinic this past summer. “We’re two competitive athletes still in love with life and sports who share a similar philosophy when it comes to health and well-being,” she says. “So it’s a very good fit for our patients too.”

Still, when all is said and done, there’s nothing that gets Cathryn more excited than the thought of being on the mountain on a big powder day with nothing to look forward to but a run full of face shots. “That’s what it’s all about,” she says. “When I’m on top of Ruby Bowl and there’s an untracked line with 20cm of fresh snow and there’s no one else around; to me, that’s paradise. That’s what I live for. That’s why I’m a Whistlerite…”