Don Cherry for Prime Minister?
By Simon J Black
Published: 12/22/2006
I admit to cheering (almost crying) when Tommy Douglas was announced as our Greatest Canadian on the popular CBC show. Hey, it’s gloomy times for the left and we take any victory we can get, no matter how small. Yet my celebrations were cut short when host Wendy Mesley conveyed the bad news: Don Cherry ranked 7th in the contest, just pipping Sir John A. and Alexander Graham Bell. I’ve always thought that the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em videos make a great contribution to nation-building, but surely they don’t surpass Confederation or the telephone.
The legitimacy of the whole Greatest exercise was thrown into doubt by Cherry’s surprise showing. Cherry coached a bit of hockey and played it lousily. But Wayne Gretzky – number 10 in the poll – has coached a bit of hockey and played it greatly, in fact he’s known as the Great One. Cherry’s made his living as a mouth-piece for all that’s wrong with our national sport (I know it’s really lacrosse, but who are we kidding?). Gretzky is known for his finesse, skill, and sportsmanship; Cherry is known for his buffoonery, xenophobia and serious lack of dress sense. So to what do we owe the love that Cherry receives from coast-to-coast? It’s not just the flawed methodology of the Greatest Canadian that has registered his popularity. One cannot watch Hockey Night in Canada without seeing some fan holding a sign stating “Cherry for Prime Minister”. And the man is mobbed at public appearances across the nation, from Orillia to Moosejaw.
There’s something deeper at work here. Cherry has a history of voicing right-wing, anti-Quebec and sexist opinions. He’ll often refer to players he doesn’t like as “shooting,” “checking,” “skating,” or any other number of actions, “like a girl”. Cherry advocates for the public displays of violence that is ‘fighting’ in hockey, a behaviour that is banned and condemned in almost every other sport no matter how aggressive it may be. In the lead up to the Iraq war, Cherry couldn’t contain his support for the Bush regime and his disdain for the Liberal government. Wearing a Stars and Stripes neck tie on his long running Coaches Corner segment, Cherry laid into co-host Ron MacLean for being neutral on the war and criticized the Montreal fans for booing the American national anthem in a game earlier that week. Cherry’s anti-French vitriolic has been on display more than once, whether he is mocking the language, refusing to pronunciate Quebecois names correctly, or calling Quebeckers “whiners”. He’s railed against the ‘foreign’ influence in the NHL ever since European players started making their way across the Atlantic to ply their trade in the world’s top league. Cherry doesn’t like European players taking jobs from good-old Canadian boys, "I worked in construction for 25 years while I was playin' and after. I know what it's like to have somebody take your job," he once said.
Quotes such as these can be found on the CBC website dedicated to Don. For any other public employee (Cherry’s paid by the Ceeb) this type of conduct would not be excused. Yet it’s exactly this reputation that the CBC puts front and center to promote Cherry and his Hockey Night appearances: “Some argue the coach known as Grapes has no place on television; others say he's the only genuine voice left in a country obsessed with political correctness,” the website proclaims. Every Saturday night during hockey season, Cherry takes top billing, playing the proud bigot in the CBC’s theatre of political correctness. And he never tires of denouncing the “Left-wing pinkos” who are trying to destroy the game.
Cherry represents all that is wrong with Canadian hockey. Go to any rink on a Friday night and you’ll find much of what Cherry espouses being put into practice. Fighting amongst young boys who are playing out some masculinities that equate strength and worth with violence and intimidation. This behaviour spills over into the stands as parents yell and often physically confront one another. Players who shy away from a body-check are called “girls”. And as testaments from a number of players of colour reveal, Canadian hockey is rife with racism and discrimination (the informative CBC radio documentary Black Ice documents this). Maybe Cherry’s popular because people agree with him; he “tells it like it is.” According to the CBC, Cherry says he speaks for the “average-Joe” and the “working-guy”. It sounds like the campaign slogans of some other right-wing nuts who are also in the public eye. It’s funny, since the election of Stephen Harper I haven’t seen many “Cherry for Prime Minister” signs while watching the games on Saturday night. There’s no doubting Cherry has become an icon for the country’s hockey faithful. But he represents the worst of our game and more than that, the dark side of our nation.
Published in Canadian Dimension Jan/Feb 2007 Issue