By Thia James

Marlene Bird deals with pain of the past, plans for the future

May 14, 2015 | 7:02 AM

It’s been nearly a year since Marlene Bird survived a violent attack in Prince Albert.

The attack left Bird with serious burns that claimed both of her legs and a cut to her face that has damaged her eyesight. The Montreal Lake First Nation mother and grandmother spent months recovering in hospitals in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Now living in Timber Bay, a small hamlet on the East side of Montreal Lake, with her partner Patrick Lavallee, Bird is navigating her new life.

Speaking via telephone on Wednesday, she didn’t want to discuss the attack or her time in the hospital. But she said if she could ask her attacker one question, it would be “why would a man do this to a woman?”

Leslie Black pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted murder on April 28 in connection to the assault. He was also charged with aggravated sexual assault, but the Crown plans to drop that charge after sentencing is complete.

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“I’m feeling glad that he admitted it,” she said. Bird found out about the guilty plea from the news.

She attended one of the first of Black’s court appearances last year, but he was not in the court room.

“I really wanted him to see my situation and my wheelchair. No legs,” she said of why she attended.

Bird and her family also fought a publication ban that prevented her from being named in media reports about the court case. In a letter to the court, she expressed her will not to be another statistic and to be a voice for all women.

A provincial court judge sided with Bird’s request, lifting the ban.

The day Black pleaded guilty, Lavallee sent a brief statement to paNOW reacting to the turn of events.

“All I can say right now is that Marlene Darlene Bird is given a life sentence without legs and there is no chance of parole to ever get her real legs back,” he wrote.

The June 1, 2014 attack left Bird with severe burns, clinging to life in a parking lot near the Margo Fournier Center. One of the first people to find her, Stacy Free, described what she saw as horrific.

When Bird spoke to her, she said, ‘help me, help me,’ Free said last June.

“I knew there was nothing I could do. I just basically stood where she could see me,” she said.

Help arrived and Bird was eventually transported to a burn unit at an Edmonton hospital. During her stay, she underwent skin grafts, surgery and the double leg amputation. She was also intubated to help her breathe.

Bird was later moved to a hospital in Saskatoon to continue along in her recovery. She was released from the Saskatoon hospital and ended up in Prince Albert with only her belongings, which included a scooter and a wheelchair.

Bird continues to require medical treatments. On June 1, the one-year anniversary of the attack, she will undergo eye surgery. The cut to her face extends from her eyelid to her nose and her nose was shattered. She can see with the eye, but she has double vision, which leaves her dizzy.

A specialist in Saskatoon examined her eyelid and told Bird that it could be fixed. There are a lot of things that could happen during the surgery, she said, but she still plans to go through with it.

Bird hasn’t been coping too well with her new circumstances and she said she’s hoping to find an elder who is also disabled and has lived with a disability for years. She wants to talk to them about how they deal with their frustrations and how they remain strong to cope with it.

The mornings are the most difficult for her, since she wants to get up early in the mornings to make coffee and other things, but can’t.

Right now, her mother and her children are sources of strength for her.

“My mom helps me lots. She keeps telling me to pray, pray before I go to bed because I tell her about my frustrations and I apologize for telling her my frustrations and my problems,” she said.

She is grateful to her Montreal Lake support worker and a worker from the Prince Albert Police Service’s victim services unit. They help her when she is stranded and in need of transportation, as well provide as counselling.

Travel poses the greatest challenge for her now. She is dependent on a scooter for her own mobility, but to get to Prince Albert for medical visits or to Saskatoon to see her family, she needs to hire a vehicle equipped to transport her. Her mother, who lives in Saskatoon, is ill and fears being too far away from her doctors.

With no vehicle, Bird struggled on Wednesday to try to find a way to get to a close friend’s funeral in the Little Red River community. Her friend too, struggled with an addiction.

“I was close to her. She was a good friend, no matter if she had an addiction too,” she said.

Montreal Lake is also quite a distance from Prince Albert and Saskatoon. It is just more than 100 kilometres north of Prince Albert. And to travel to any place outside of the community is costly.

She pays for fuel with money she receives in the form of welfare and disability payments. She has to make trips to see her doctor once a month, as well as her eye doctor.

The money donated generously by members of the community, Saskatchewan residents and by people across the country through the YWCA goes towards her other necessities. She was hoping to turn to Telemiracle to help her find a vehicle, but she couldn’t contact them since she didn’t have a phone number.

While living in Prince Albert may have been more convenient, she felt she needed to move to Timber Bay to get away from her friends. This is important because, as she said “it’s easy for me to have temptations.”

Those temptations come in the form of alcohol. Bird still struggles with an alcohol addiction.

Alcohol has had a detrimental impact on her family, already claiming the lives of loved ones. Bird, herself had been working through her own struggles prior to the attack.

She said an addictions counsellor in Montreal Lake will help her get into a treatment program.

“It’s me who has a problem,” she said.

Although her new life poses challenges, she faces the future with goals in hand.

Bird wants to complete her Grade 12 education. She said she was discouraged by a science teacher, who advised her to find a job without her Grade 12 education since a young Bird wasn’t really trying in the class.

Afterwards, she would like to find work. She used to work at a casino for nearly two years before she met an abusive partner. In that job, she said she did well with handling cash.

“I want to just to be glad that I’m alive and let other families know that lost their daughters or somebody that to be strong.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames