Sportswriter calls for greater accountability in hockey culture with new book

Author Rick Westhead talks about his new book “We Breed Lions.”

Rick Westhead, who covered the story of five former Canada World Junior players who were investigated and eventually acquitted for an alleged sexual assault in 2018, said there needs to be greater accountability in the country’s most popular sport.

“Accountability means people are held responsible for the choices they make,” he told CTV News Atlantic’s Todd Battis on Thursday.

Westhead, a sportswriter and investigative journalist with TSN, explores hockey culture and ongoing issues with homophobia and misogyny in locker rooms with his new book “We Breed Lions.”

“Hockey has been such a monoculture,” he said. “It’s a sport where players look alike and play alike. This is a sport that really does not promote or accept individualism.

“There’s good things about that, but what that also does is instill an attitude that when you see something wrong, there’s too much fear to speak up.”

Westhead, who interviewed nearly 60 young men for the book, said he continues to hear stories of bad behaviour in locker rooms.

“If you have adult coaches leaving minors by themselves in locker rooms and bad things happen, they need to be held accountable,” he said. “Hockey Canada is still one of the organizations that keeps these sanctions a secret from the public.

“If a coach in Halifax is suspended, the public doesn’t have the right to know it. I would think it’s in the public interest to know the adults who have gone through the discipline system. That should be in the public sphere the same way it is for courts.”

Westhead will be in Halifax on Saturday for a conversation with Rachel Reid, the author of “Heated Rivalry,” which was recently adapted into a popular television show.

The event will be held at the Indigo at 188 Chain Lake Dr. at 2 p.m.