7:00 PM
Kinsella Auditorium
McCain Hall

Rick Westhead, Senior Correspondent at TSN, will deliver this year's annual Endowed Chair in Criminology and Criminal Justice Lecture on Wednesday, January 21 in the Kinsella Auditorium, ground floor of McCain Hall.

In his lecture, entitled "From Hockey Rinks to Courtrooms: Hockey, and the Public Interest," Westhead will explore what it means to pursue public-interest journalism in a country where hockey is often treated as untouchable. The lecture will be drawn from years of investigative reporting behind his new book We Breed Lions, an examination of how Canada’s most cherished sport has repeatedly failed young people it claims to protect.

Through real cases, court records, and interviews, Westhead will pull back the curtain on the reporting process itself: how stories are sourced, verified, and lawyered, and explore how power, entitlement, and institutional secrecy have shaped junior hockey culture. 

Rick Westhead is TSN’s Senior Correspondent and a two-time winner of Canadian sports writer of the year, presented by Sport Media Canada. His new book, We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture, is a hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey’s moment of reckoning in Canada, and the ways in which a game that is so universally loved has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey.

Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression recognized him in 2023 with the Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism. Westhead breaks news of consequence and has won six Canadian Screen Awards for his original features for various TSN properties. In 2025, he was recognized for his “fearless reporting” by The Hockey News in its list of 100 People of Power and Influence in hockey. Prior to joining TSN, Westhead served as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, where he reported on the ground in countries including Afghanistan, China, and Saudi Arabia.