Many years ago I would often find myself defending Don Cherry, or at least making fun of his most hysterical detractors. He deserved most of the grief he got, but he also had a knack for sending people off the deep end. I mean, did the Official Languages Commissioner really need to get involved when Cherry suggested francophones were disproportionately fond of wearing visors? Over the years he was accused not just of practically inventing hockey violence, but of helping to transform Canada itself from a nation of peacekeepers into a nation of warriors. Some neat trick for a guy who argued in vain for years just to change the NHL’s icing rule.
But that was 15, 20 years ago. To see some of these more grandiose charges against Cherry resurface on Twitter this week, now that he has finally and with just cause been yanked off the air, felt anachronistic. No one had really pretended he was relevant, let alone dangerous, for ages; he was as easy as the mute button to ignore; the only question was if and when he would finally cross some invisible line and what exactly he would say. His career’s obituary was in the can ages ago: he loved old time hockey and the troops, and said a bunch of dumb stuff, and it made him very rich.
I don’t want to diminish his mean, store-bought, Saturday-night rant against “you people” — ungrateful urban immigrants, it is reasonable to infer. Popular culture often casts hockey as the epitome of Canadian-ness, as Arpon Basu, editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montreal, observed on Twitter, and “for many people of colour, feeling fully Canadian can sometimes be an elusive goal.”
“All it takes is ‘you people’ for … incremental gains to be wiped away,” Basu wrote. “Two words on our ‘national’ hockey broadcast, and you’re right back at zero.”
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See Also:
(1) Did Don Cherry just misspeak, or has he laid bare Canada’s divisions?
(2) Grapes feeling the love from supporters
(3) Don Cherry incident will leave a bitter taste for quite some time
(4) Hazel McCallion, others, to rally in support of Don Cherry
(5) Toronto Sun readers respond to Don Cherry’s firing
PUT GRAPES BACK ON
This whole thing is just dumb. It should never have happened.
It’s the new woke society gone mad where a legend can be tossed into the garbage heap, not for what he said, but for what his critics wanted him to say!
Don Cherry (admittedly clumsily) merely pointed out an opinion based on an observation. What kind of lynch mob society have we allowed ourselves to become? 38 yrs of enjoyment and entertainment but say one or in this case a couple of words wrong. I’d venture a guess that a majority, perhaps a vast majority of Canadians totally agree with what Don said. That being the interpretation the left is so outraged about not Don’s explanation of what he meant. You’d be hard pressed to find a significant portion of the population outside of Toronto not wearing poppies leading up to Remembrance Day. So if having 50% of the non-poppy wearing population of that city being non Canadian born has nothing to do with it, then what is wrong with the 50% of white Canadian born citizens of Toronto? Why are they so unappreciative of the sacrifice of our brave men and women over the generations? Where were their poppies? They screamed for Don’s head (and got it) so if its not unappreciative refugees (not immigrants) then how about the media try and find out WTF is wrong with white Torontonians. Why don’t they care? The media might not like what they find out. Of course nobody would ever find out if they did because they wouldn’t report it. Corrupt. Rotten to the bone. Zero credibility.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-put-don-cherry-back-on-the-air-this-saturday