| Benefit
concert planned for suicide victim
"I remember her enthusiasm, her desire
to experience the good things life had to offer. It was really
contagious. She brought great joy to my life."
By Amy Steele -- News Reporter
A photo taken of Jolie
Angelina McNabb when she was 22 shows her in a revealing red dress
and surrounded by fireweed. Her dark hair is up and a small smile
plays upon her lips. She looks strikingly beautiful and sensuous.
Yet three years later, this same woman killed herself at the Whitehorse
Correctional Centre.
Unable to deal with
the pain of being sexually abused as a child, and her subsequent
addiction to alcohol and drugs, she hanged herself on September
3. She was in jail on remand awaiting trial for four minor criminal
charges. A coroner's inquest will be held into her death.
Alcohol brought out
her anger and led to her troubles with the law, but she was actually
a quiet and sensitive person, said Gary Bailie, her former common-law
partner. Bailie sits in his house in McIntyre Village. A white
candle flickers in front of him as he talks about the mother of
his child.
He wants her to be remembered
as a special woman, not as a junkie or a drunk, he says. "She
was an amazing woman with an irresistible sense of humor and kind
and gentle ways. I remember her enthusiasm, her desire to experience
the good things life had to offer. It was really contagious. She
brought great joy to my life. She wanted to be free, to be with
her family and to live a clean life. But she got caught up in
(alcohol and drug abuse) like many other people. The abuse she
suffered at her childhood home left such deep scars on her soul."
McNabb's mother was
from the Peepeekisis First Nation in Saskatchewan. She gave birth
to McNabb when she was 15. McNabb lived in a series of foster
homes for the first eight years of her life before she was adopted
by a family in the Yukon.
She was abused at the
foster homes, but her adoptive home became an even worse nightmare,
says Bailie. "There, she suffered severe physical, mental
and sexual abuses at the hands of her father. One of the things
he did was to kill his daughter's pets. Her mother denied what
was going on and sent McNabb to therapy where she was given tranquilizers.
Later, her father, who
was a prominent citizen, was tried on sexual abuse charges but
only served a short time in jail. "He should've served a
life sentence for what he did to her," says Bailie.
When Bailie first met
McNabb, she was 17 and didn't use drugs or alcohol, he says. McNabb
loved the outdoors, and the couple would go on walks, cross-country
skiing and camping trips together, he says.
They had a daughter
together a couple of years later. It was shortly after Stacity
was born that McNabb turned to alcohol and drugs. "I've been
told people who have been sexually abused tend to come undone
shortly after they have their first child," says Bailie.
"McNabb discovered cocaine as an escape", he says. She
also drank heavily.
Bailie recalls how drug
dealers would prey on her because she was so vulnerable and lacked
self-esteem. "I didn't see her much. She was gone all the
time. She sought out like-minded people."
Whenever she came home,
Bailie would nurse her back to health but soon she'd leave again.
"I realized I couldn't get angry because that would scare
her away," he explains. Eventually, the couple split up.
But they remained friends.
In the last 18 months
of her life, McNabb had quit the drugs and was mainly drinking,
says Bailie. All the while, she was trying to get help. She went
to two addictions treatment centres, one in B.C., one in Alberta,
as well as Crossroads in Whitehorse. Nothing worked for her. "You
need people able to treat the issues and not the symptoms,"
says Bailie. "There are a lot of well-meaning, intelligent,
caring people in the system, but Jolie was failed by the system.
"Jolie just really needed someone she could trust. It was
difficult for her to trust people because she'd been lied to and
deceived throughout her life."
But even when she was
battling with her addictions, McNabb always thought of her daughter,
says Bailie. "She would come home for Christmas and Stacity's
birthday and mother and child would spent a lot of time together",
he says. "Stacity brought a lot of joy to Jolie. That was
the part that made me the saddest."
Bailie says he was shocked
when he learned she had committed suicide. He talked with her
the night before and she'd sounded fine. "She wanted to get
her life on track. She talked to her daughter. I was filled with
a renewed hope for her. It didn't sit right at all that this happened.
She should've been watched. She needed help. She needed to be
paid more attention to."
After Jolie died, Bailie
decided to take her home to the Peepeekisis First Nation near
Regina. There, her Plains Cree people conducted sweats, a pipe
ceremony and sang traditional songs. She was given the name Blue
Feather Eagle Woman by an elder and buried on their land. Bailie
says he was told McNabb was going to a better place. "Who
are we to question the Creator, when your burden's too heavy to
carry you home," an elder said of McNabb's death.
Her last name was legally
changed from Robson to McNabb. Bailie didn't want her buried with
any legacy of her abusive adoptive father.
 After
visiting with McNabb's people, Bailie says he felt like doing
something to commemorate Jolie's life. So he's organized a benefit
concert for this Sunday, starting at 4 p.m., at the Na Kwa Ta
Ku Potlatch House in McIntyre Village. All of the proceeds from
the event will go to the Youth of Today Society of Whitehorse,
he says. Matthew Lien and the Caribou Commons, Terri-Lynn Puckett,
Lori Malo, Kevin Barr, Manfred Janssen, David Gilmore and Mark
Hoppe will perform at it.
"I'm doing my part
not to dwell on the negative and anger but to move forward,"
says Bailie. We need to honor Jolie but also ourselves. If Jolie
would've come to terms with everything, she would've been such
an asset. She had so much to offer. She was amazing with some
of her profound thoughts. She was beginning to discover things.
She was on the verge of turning her life around. But she isn't
totally gone because she lives on through her daughter, little
Stacity", says Bailie. "She left behind the greatest
gift anyone could. The gift of life. I look at my girl and see
her mom's spirit and beauty.
"If anyone deserves
to be an angel it's Jolie."
^
Top Of Page
| 
