Every piece, be it written or spoken, over the last three and a half days regarding Don Cherry's final Hockey Night in Canada Coach's Corner segment follows a fairly standard template. First, the person excoriates the commentary regarding 'You people,' and then launches into their own personal saga of acceptance as an open-minded person. Finally, a fair percentage salute Sportsnet for having the courage to 'fire' the seventh greatest Canadian of all time according to the 2004 poll CBC ran.
I want to go in a slightly different direction, although I end up in the same place. And I worry that it will come off as an apologist. It isn't. It's an explanation and an appreciation for years of public service by Cherry. But I assure you, I don't condone his words. Or many of his words of the past two decades.
Many a moons ago ... about 37 years ago, give or take three months, I was working as the Sports Information Director for a radio station that has been gone for awhile now. There suddenly developed a hole in the syndicated market when a weekly show about the NHL went under. Ken Mackenzie of the Hockey News and I had a conversation and I pitched a quiz show set in a pub with a celebrity quizmaster. Even wrote the pilot episode. The man I wanted behind the bar dispensing quips and questions was none other than Donald S. Cherry. He had his own pub-based hockey commentary and interview show on at the time. I thought 'easy set to transform' and a star with proven ability to tell a joke.
So, off to see Don at his then-home in Mississauga. As a guest in his house, Don made every attempt to treat me as well as Ken (a legend that possibly eclipsed Cherry at the time, at least in the media). We didn't stay long enough for libations, but it was a pleasurable meeting. If Don had decided to do the job, I think he would have been a breeze to work with, even though he was as far right as possible and I'm a small C (as in conservative) Liberal--like the majority of Canadians.
Sadly, Don passed on the show, making the task of bringing it into life immeasurably harder. We eventually landed Dave Hodges to be the emcee/quiz guy. But I never felt comfortable with him and the meeting at CHCH TV in Hamilton to pitch the show went ... disastrously. Hodges made more than a few 'change' suggestions and I felt that, plus the incredibly tight schedule to pull it all together, doomed the show. And yes, I never liked Hodges subsequently. Hodges probably doesn't even remember ever having met me.
Now, over the years, Don Cherry was very predictable in his behaviour and his commentary. Never strayed an inch. He loves the people who serve this country. Putting their life on the line immediately makes that person a hero in Cherry's mind. His support of the military, the police, the firefighters, has never wavered a second. And when he tears up talking about a fallen hero, Don, is as genuine as the definition of the word. That support prompts comments from the heart, not the head. As in this past weekend. And the ugly words he spouted Saturday are Donald S. Cherry at his least finest.
Not that Cherry's commentaries on immigrants need reinforcing as examples of him at the core of his being. He supports Canadian-born hockey players at the expense of all non-Canadian born players. That's always been the case. When Cherry, who famously mangles foreign names, states his admiration for a player like Alex Ovechkin, I guarantee it's grudging admiration. He hates, absolutely hates, something that promotes foreign involvement in the NHL over a Canadian. By the way, those mangled names? Absolutely not planned out. I laugh when I think of Cherry and my father both trying to handle Yvon Cournoyer. A hero from Canada, from MY favourite team, the Montreal Canadiens. Ivan Corn-you're-yer. (It's actually Eevahn Corn-why-ay) They'd both go that route, almost in rhythm.
Hockey-playing kids are next dearest to Don's heart to his family and the service. In 'CBC/Sportsnet' retirement, I expect Don to see even more kid's hockey, where he is adored. There might be some parents and some old enough kids to be perceptive that some of what he says is puerile. But the kids? If they'd had a vote back in 2004, he would have been named the top Canadian ever, not just seventh.
When I think of the sudden end of Don S. Cherry, media icon, I wondered immediately who to compare it to. Woody Hayes, the great Ohio State football couch, and the perpetrator of an attack on an opposing player in a moment of madness beyond the pale. Joe Paterno, maybe the greatest college football coach, and a man oblivious to the sexual predation done under his nose by an assistant coach, turned into pariah when the story broke. Bill Cosby, if you want to include non-sports folks, although his days at Temple included being a part of the Track and Field squad. Any number of people who didn't censor themselves sufficiently to hide dark, ugly sides.
And who knows, maybe a President of the USA can fall, through the means test of his own words. Lies revealed through the pomposity of an enfant terrible's own boastful accounts that nothing was wrong here.
In a different time, at a younger age, Don would be able to apologize (completely out of character and he's already refused to do so), spend some time hanging around hockey players of a younger age (not in a creepy way, but in a supportive way that they almost all appreciate), and then come back, probably on Sportsnet's competitor TSN. But the 85 year old Cherry will not do that. He'll go to his grave thinking he got a real raw deal supporting the troops who gave their lives in muddy fields in Normandy, France all those years ago. He won't understand.
And that's the sad part. His greatness was his weakness, the inability to be impartial, to see everybody NOT on his side by his own definition, as the other side, the enemy.
And as Jeff Blair said so eloquently on Monday's Writer's Bloc on Sportsnet, EVERYBODY, either personally or through ancestors, has been "You people, the others." What Don missed and still misses, is "We Canadians" ALWAYS supersedes "You People."
Every time.
