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The 14-year-old girl who bumps around in the police wagon is being unceremoniously returned to the Willingdon Industrial School for Girls, a juvenile correctional institute on Vancouver’s east side.

It is 1969. Paulette Steeves, a ward of the provincial government and incorrigible runaway, has been incarcerated here since the age of 13.

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“I’m not going back,” Steeves says defiantly. “I’m going to get away.”

The other young women in the police wagon respond with disbelief. “You can’t do that. How are you going to do that?”

“Just watch me,” the girl says.

The wagon passes through the front gate, pulls up the drive, and slows to a stop. A female police officer opens the rear door to let the prisoners out.

Suddenly, the girl bolts, long hair whipping behind her. She leaps onto the fence, scrambles to the top, seizes the barbed wire with bare hands, hurls her body forward. Points of metal shred her skin as she sails over the top.