One of the only signs anyone was paying attention to Joshua Nepinak during his teenage years was the black book a group of strangers filled with notes about him as they watched him come and go from a nondescript Winnipeg home.
Ate breakfast: 10 a.m. Left for school: 11 a.m. Dinner: 6:30 p.m. In bed: 10:30 p.m.
By the time he was 16, he’d ended up in the child welfare system’s emergency placement resource shelters about two dozen times. He knew them well: the bare bedrooms, the revolving door of staff taking notes on his comings and goings, the way they felt like somewhere