The good men: inside the all-male group taking on modern masculinity

On a warm Tuesday evening, a dozen men gathered on couches at a Lululemon location in Toronto called The Local. Since last year, as an experiment to reach more male customers, the store has been home to The Huddle, a male bonding group which meets Tuesday nights after closing to work out, run, or meditate.

But once a month, the men circle up to talk about, well, their feelings.

Downtempo jazz and cartons of maple sap water greeted me as I plunked myself down next to a young man who recently quit his job to become a freelance cinematographer. The evening’s facilitator, Alex Cameron, a man with hulking, tattoo-plastered arms and slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair, told us the theme for this session: emotional literacy. Cameron, who is 40, runs a psychotherapy practice nearby.

To start off, Joe, a slight man in a hoodie, volunteered a story about how he came to realize that vulnerability was a strength rather than weakness.

“I’ve never shared this in front of a group before,” said Joe, 34, who told us the story of his mother passing away when he was three; how his dad became hardened and distant; and how, at the age of 27, he found himself in deep depression.

“I was single, in a job I hated, with very few friends I could count on. I felt like we are all going to die anyways, so what’s the purpose of trying?”

Uncovering blocked emotions, Joe told us, saved his life.

“I realized if I wasn’t going to take my life, I had to go back in time and work through my feelings. I was a 27-year-old living in a little boy’s trauma. I needed to prove to myself that it was safe to feel again.”

We went around the circle are committed by socially isolated white men.