Whenever she heard music, Marian Deptula-Reinbold would drop whatever she was doing and start to dance. It was her passion.
Whenever she heard music, Marian Deptula-Reinbold would drop whatever she was doing and start to dance. It was her passion. She was classy and elegant, a petite woman that in the words of her son Douglas “could move like smoke and always looked beautiful.”
Mrs. Deptula-Reinbold, who was the founder of MDO Opticians in St. Albert, recently passed away after a long battle with cancer. She is survived by her four children, 11 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Her children describe her as a woman with a big heart, who dressed exquisitely and demonstrated extreme business savvy. They say she was a spark.
“She was tough, very tough and she demanded respect,” her daughter Deborah remembers. “But we knew we were loved and at the end of the day we always knew we were safe.”
Mrs. Deptula-Reinbold was born in the early 1930s to Norwegian immigrants in Canyon Creek, Alta. (Her exact age remains a secret. Even her daughters joke they weren't always sure about it.) It was a difficult time and none of her eight older siblings wanted to look after their youngest sister. So she learned to look after herself.
She always respected her family, though, says Deborah. She cared for them and looked up to her father. Years later, she taught her own children that one's most important job in life is to keep the family together and to “be a mom.” She was always there when they needed her, she says.
“She taught me more lessons about forgiveness than you could ever imagine,” she says.
She met her first husband in her early 20s. He was an RCMP officer who arrested her for illegally laying nets in the lake. The couple married a few years later and moved to St. Albert in 1963, where she stayed ever since. She later divorced and married again in her 50s.
Her children say Mrs. Deptula-Reinbold always wanted to ensure the family was well looked after and so she took on odd jobs. She worked as a secretary, taught tap-dancing and even had a stint as a substitute teacher at Vital Grandin Catholic School.
“She always found ways to make money,” her daughter Cindy says. “She would do the census, pull us kids on sleds, sew all our costumes.”
But it wasn't until the 1970s that she found her true calling. Her youngest daughter Trudi says it was her bad eyesight that inspired her mother to become an optometric assistant. All of the daughters wear glasses but her eyes “were the worst,” Trudi says. She still has her mother's first business card.
In 1980, Mrs. Deptula-Reinbold opened her first store – Optics by Marian – in Village Tree Mall. A second store – Summit Optical – opened two years later. The businesses were consolidated into MDO Opticians in the early 2000s. The store remains a family business.
In 2012, she gave up her optician's licence after a recurring battle with cancer. She had made a name for herself by then and was inducted into the College of Opticians of Alberta Hall of Fame in April 2014. She was the first woman in the province to own an optical dispensary, and one of the first women recognized by the college.
Her children call her an inspiration to female entrepreneurs in the city – the one per cent of women in the profession's previous all-men's club.
“She was polite, she was always dressed well, and she never looked like she didn't know what she was doing,” says Deborah. “She studied everything and if one of the guys made sexist remarks … she would just look at them and they never did it again.”
But as much as she demanded respect, Mrs. Deptula-Reinbold was famed for her love and her beauty. Cindy remembers her mother showing up at her business one day, well into her 80s by then, all dressed in jeans and glamour. In the boutique shops in Edmonton, the women called her glam-ma, she says.
“I don't have a memory of my mom not looking beautiful,” adds Douglas.
And there's no one who spread love like their mom, they all agree. She would kiss and hug and compliment, and she listened more than she talked. She was known across the city and there was no one who did not think they were the most special, they say.
“She must have spend hours talking to each of us,” says Deborah. “It was like she was looking into your heart.”
A celebration of Marian Deptula-Reinbold's life will take place on Monday, Aug. 24 at 11 a.m. at St. Albert Catholic Parish at 7 St. Vital Ave. In lieu of flowers, donations are gratefully accepted for the Alberta Cancer Foundation at #700, 10123 99 Street in Edmonton or at albertacancer.ca.
