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The conversation turned rapidly to the frustration we’ve both felt trying to get men that we care about to take better care of themselves. But we both had to acknowledge that it wasn’t something that had been easy for us to do ourselves. Steve only started taking proper care of himself after a minor health scare knocked some sense into him. For me, it was having kids, and realizing with a heart-dropping lurch one day, as I bounced my then-18-month-old daughter on my knee, that if I dropped dead at the moment she’d never remember me. All the nights I’d stayed up awake with her while she fussed and diapers I’d changed wouldn’t count, somehow. She’d grow up knowing me only as a ghost in photos and as the voice in the background of family videos.

To call that realization sobering is to understate its impact by several orders of magnitude. My lingering adolescent sense of immortality vanished in an instant, replaced by an irresistible urge to buy more life insurance.

Steve and I, though, are probably lucky to have had our wake-up calls relatively early. A lot of men advance well into middle age before they start taking their health — mental or physical — seriously. Our bodies are remarkable machines, and modern medicine can do a lot. But there are limits to both. Why push them?

A lot of it is societal pressure, I suspect. As Prof. Whitley noted in his article, the notion of Canadian masculinity is still rooted in strong, stoic, silent stereotypes. The Canadian man is supposed to be half Vimy-capturing soldier, half lumberjack, all hockey brawler. But I think a lot of it is simply ignorance — not stubbornness or pride, just literally not knowing better. Every young woman is taught about the importance of regularly checking her breasts for any worrying signs of cancer. I didn’t even know what a prostate was for until a friend’s father nearly died when his became cancerous. I had to look it up on the Internet.