The ‘prison’ of toxic masculinity can keep men from seeking medical care. Canada wants to fix that

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in early April 2020, Kolter Bouchard was just weeks into fatherhood when he noticed a lump on his neck.

The then-29-year-old-Toronto radio host feared it was cancer, but he waited to get it checked. Maybe it was just stress, he thought. 

“Part of it was, I like to take a ‘Wait and hope it’ll go away’ approach,” Bouchard told The Current’s Matt Galloway. 

It wasn’t until he discovered a second lump a month later that Bouchard went to see his doctor. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

“I had flashes when I was thinking this might be cancer,” said Bouchard. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to look like that. I don’t want to be a withered … husk of my current self.’”

His experience isn’t unusual.

Researchers and health advocates say many men delay seeking care, even when symptoms appear — a trend the federal government says it hopes to reverse by developing a strategy focused on improving men’s and boys’ health.

Recent data from Statistics Canada show men are experiencing distinct health challenges, including higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, and premature or preventable death. 

“Too often, the message men and boys hear is to tough it out, to stay quiet and to deal with it alone,” Minister of Women and Gender Equality Rechie Valdez said at the news conference in February. 

Health Canada says the strategy, set to be released later this year, aims to foster “supportive and safe environments, challenge harmful stereotypes, reduce stigma, and encourage men of all ages to seek help when they need it.”

Why men wait

A common thread in some of the statistics mirrors Bouchard’s story; waiting for care. About 65 per cent of men waited at least six days before seeking help for symptoms, according to a September 2025 report released by Movember, a men’s health advocacy organization. And nearly one in 10 delay care for more than two years, according to the results.

Those numbers don’t surprise Dr. David Kuhl, a professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia who studies how trauma, masculinity and fatherhood shape men’s health. 

Kuhl, who works closely with firefighters, says he often sees Canadian men avoid getting health care because they feel it challenges their identity as men — a belief shaped in part by broader cultural messaging.

“At the heart of it is the messages that they’ve been given about what it means to be a man,” said Kuhl. “It ends there in terms of ‘I don’t ask for help, I’m independent, I suppress some of my emotions and I’m isolated in that.”

The ‘vicious cycle’ of the manosphere

Timothy Caulfield, a professor in the faculty of law and the school of public health at the University of Alberta, says many of the health challenges facing men are increasingly being linked to messaging from the so-called “manosphere” — an umbrella term used to describe online communities and content its critics say promote misogynistic and harmful views .

“Many of these harms … are closely tethered to the embrace of traditional masculine norms,” said Caulfield. “There is a crisis of health for men, which has been around for a long time, and the manosphere which is exploiting the existence of this crisis, is only making it worse.”

The messaging that targets men on social media, podcasts, gamer communities and other digital spaces often promote an aggressive definition of masculinity in which dominance and physical appearance are markers of male worth.

And that creates a “vicious cycle,” Caulfield said.

“You have this genuine problem with men’s health … overall well-being, feeling isolated,” he said. “The manosphere presents itself as a solution [but] that solution is hyper masculinity, which is the exact wrong thing that we need.”

Reframing masculinity

Caulfield says any national strategy should acknowledge the broader cultural forces shaping men’s health, including the growing influence of online influencers and even political movements.

“I mean, much of what happened in the United States around MAGA had elements of the manosphere,” said Caulfield. “This is not something that’s happening on the sidelines, this is becoming core to pop culture.”

For Bouchard, part of the solution is encouraging men to share their experiences. 

“I think the biggest thing that can be done is normalising the conversation about this,” he said. “That comes from encouraging men to speak to other men.”

Kuhl agrees.

“We…need to understand that men want to talk about [their health issues], but they want to talk about it with people who can use their language … their understanding of what’s going on in their bodies and minds,” said Kuhl.

He says those conversations should also include reframing how masculinity — a word often paired with “toxic” — is seen and understood.

“We can talk about how ‘providing for my family’ means [that] I stay healthy,” said Kuhl. “It means then I take courage rather than fear and say, ‘I’m going to talk to somebody about it,’ and hopefully I’ll find a doctor who understands what it means to talk to a man.”

He adds, emphasizing the positive aspects of masculinity, such as the desire to provide and care for a family, is crucial to that reframing. Kuhl also encourages family doctors to engage boys and men earlier in the health-care system — not just when they’re already in crisis.

For example, Kuhl says, physicians could invite fathers to be part of prenatal visits and signal that their health matters, too.

“If it’s primarily women and children [who] are coming … inform them that you have an interest in the health of the family and that you would really like to have a conversation with the father,” said Kuhl. “So that there’s a growing familiarity with how men perceive health [care] and how it’s provided and that it’s integrated into the whole picture of what we do in family practice.”

Health advocates say addressing men’s health could also have broader public health benefits as well.

Caulfield points to research showing that “individuals who embrace traditional masculine norms are less likely to adopt public health behaviours” such as getting vaccinated.

“[They’re] less likely to do even things like wearing sunscreen or eating healthy because those things aren’t framed as being manly,” said Caulfield. “So it really does have a broad public health component that needs to be addressed.”

He hopes the federal strategy will reinforce the message that being a man includes taking the necessary steps to stay healthy, so men can support and be present for their families.

As for Bouchard, now a relationship and lifestyle creator who also works with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada, he says the greatest irony is that he has never felt stronger than after confronting the very ideas that once held him back.

He says battling — and ultimately beating cancer twice — forced him to break free of the “prison” of toxic masculinity he once lived in. 

“I don’t recognize the person I used to be anymore,” said Bouchard. “That’s the great irony, I think, is that I am much stronger now, having gone through [cancer] and admitting to myself that I was in a prison.”