Michael Taube: Don Cherry's tough love for Canada

Somewhere across this great land, someone or something great is just getting started. This country is built on game-changing people, ideas and initiatives: Wayne Gretzky redefined a game; oil sands innovations helped us prosper; Frederick Banting transformed millions of lives; Loblaws changed how we live. Today, we continue our new National Post series that celebrates Canadian greatness, in whatever form we find it.

Canada has long suffered from groupthink, dominated by left-leaning politicians and commentators who march in lockstep in support of government intrusion, wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, limiting free speech, political correctness and wokeness. The situation intensified during COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, toppled statues and all things Justin Trudeau.

To reverse this trend, we needed Canadians who weren’t afraid to tell the truth as they saw it, no matter the risk. Perhaps the bravest Canadian free-speecher is hockey legend Don Cherry.

Cherry has long been regarded as a man’s man, but he’s also a Canadian’s Canadian. His life and career have defined what patriotism, nationalism and love of country should mean. He’s never been a stranger to controversy, suffering the occasional slings and arrows for being direct and honest with his opinions which come straight from his Canadian-sized heart, mind and soul.

Cherry has served a unique role in the public sphere: a one-man wrecking crew against Canada’s left.

The Laurentian elite and other progressives can’t stand Cherry. He tends to be right-of-centre on domestic and foreign policy matters. He isn’t part of their uppity polite society and doesn’t kowtow to their tiresome lefty worldview. He identifies with “blue collar guys.” He’s a strong supporter of the Canadian military and police. He criticized the “left-wing media” for supporting NFL players for taking a knee while they criticized quarterback Tim Tebow for doing this as a man of faith, noting “if you are Christian you are open season.” He called climate change supporters “cuckaloos.” He didn’t mind using off-colour descriptions like “left-wing pinkos” and “left-wing kooks,” when needed.

Those are some reasons why the Liberal elite keeps passing over Cherry for the Order of Canada. He’s not their guy, in spite of him being many Canadians’ guy.

Cherry never ran for public office. He used hockey, the most Canadian of sports, as his political pulpit. His popular segment, Coach’s Corner, which started in 1982 and was co-hosted with Dave Hodge and Ron MacLean, was watched religiously by hockey fans and casual observers alike. It was impossible to miss his bombastic personality, colourful language and wild attire.

Cherry didn’t limit the discussion to hockey commentary. “His appeal to Hockey Night in Canada viewers is like that of a populist politician,” the National Post’s Graeme Hamilton wrote in Dec. 2010. “He disdains Perrier-drinking elites and romanticizes the guys cracking open a beer after some garage-league hockey.”

In November 2019, mere months before COVID-19 crushed free speech in Canada and Trudeau took a virtue-signaling knee during the Black Lives Matter protests, Cherry paid a heavy price for his patriotism after his Coach’s Corner segment comments caused a stir in a country now highly sensitive to anything that may appear to be an offence to multiculturalism.

Cherry expressed frustration with Canadians who wouldn’t wear a poppy on Remembrance Day. “Nobody wears the poppy…Now you go to the small cities. You people… that come here, whatever it is — you love our way of life. You love our milk and honey. At least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price for that,” he said. Some Canadians took offence to his remarks, in spite of the fact that Cherry said it wasn’t directed at any one group. He was removed from Hockey Night in Canada, fired by Sportsnet, and his old co-host, MacLean, turn on him like a bad habit.

Cherry never apologized for this. Nor should he. Besides the fact that this was his role as a colour commentator, he had every right to express these opinions. If you truly believe in freedom of speech, you would want someone like Cherry being out front and centre making these strongly-worded statements. Someone who will tell it like it is with the courage of his convictions, irrespective of whether we completely agree or disagree with him.

Cherry didn’t always get it right, but when he thought he’d got it wrong, he’d apologize. In 2011, after three NHL enforcers died — one from an accidental overdose and two by suicide — three former NHL enforcers, Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson spoke publicly about the difficulty of the toll of the enforcer position, including chronic pain, depression, head trauma, and substance abuse. Cherry, who saw fighting as a longtime tradition in the game, interpreted their comments as claiming that fighting directly caused addiction and alcoholism issues. He shot back at them, them “hypocrites,” falsely suggesting that they didn’t want new players to make the same living they did.

Cherry course-corrected , “I have done 1500 shows… but last week… I gotta admit, I was wrong on a lot of things. I put three enforcers, tough guys, my type of guys, I threw them under the bus, and I’m sorry about it. I really am… Let’s get it right. Chris and Stu never said that they took drugs because they were enforcers in the National Hockey League. Also, they never said that they want fighting out of the game. That’s for sure. I was wrong on that. A hundred per cent wrong, and when you’re wrong, you have to admit it” — advice all Canadians should aspire to.

While some Canadians have found Cherry’s comments and occasional rants difficult to stomach, his tough love has been refreshing for many of us. Cherry’s genius has been to speak above the left’s noise and nonsense. He has an innate understanding that he doesn’t speak for the blue-collar guy and other Canadians, but speaks to their frustrations, concerns, hopes and dreams that he feels in his gut just as strongly as they do. That’s why he appeals to so many Canadians from different walks of life.

Cherry’s lifelong defence of Canadian values is what we should cherish about democracy, liberty and freedom. It’s the Canada he’s always fought for — and the Canada we should continue to fight for until we take our dying breath.

National Post