I’m not a Canadian, and not a big hockey fan (baseball for me), but for decades, for hockey fans in Canada one of the cultural constants has been Don Cherry, former low-level professional player (his legend includes a single game with the Boston Bruins), and long-time hockey commentator. Every Saturday night for — well, I’ll ask our Canadian friends to tell us how long (a comment below puts it at 35 years) — in the first intermission of the feature game on Hockey Night in Canada, Cherry has offered his commentary on “Coach’s Corner.” Cherry was a flamboyant type, given to high collars and air-horn loud suits, and he was occasionally known to offer righteous, and sometimes unrighteous, rants.
Last Saturday night, Cherry gave one of his unrighteous rants. What we celebrate as Veteran’s Day marks the armistice that ended World War I, so the US is far from the only country that marks the day. I recall my father’s always referring to it as Armistice Day. In Canada, it’s Remembrance Day. Older Canadians often observe what’s really a lovely tradition, of wearing poppies on the day to remember the Canadians that fell during the Great War. If you don’t understand why, consider that Canadian John McCrae commemorated those same fallen, buried in Belgium, far from home, in these lines:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
If Cherry, at age 85, had limited his rant to lamenting the passing of a tradition he had been reared to observe, Canada — and really, the whole hockey world — would have nodded and gone on our way. But he couldn’t leave it at that. In what has widely — and in my view correctly — been viewed as an anti-immigrant rant, Cherry is quoted as having said, “ ‘You people ... love our way of life, love our milk and honey,’ Cherry said. ‘At least you could pay a couple of bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada.’ ”
Sportsnet, which airs Hockey Night in Canada, cashiered Cherry. Sponsors apparently had a say in the decision. According to the Star:
Labatt Breweries of Canada — which sponsors Coach’s Corner through Budweiser — had a say in Cherry’s ouster.
“The comments made Saturday on Coach’s Corner were clearly inappropriate and divisive, and in no way reflect Budweiser’s views,” Todd Allen, VP of Marketing, Labatt Breweries of Canada, said in an email.
“As a sponsor of the broadcast, we immediately expressed our concerns and respect the decision which was made by Sportsnet.”
No doubt the same forces that lament Trump Jr’s having been shouted down at UCLA (wait — it was right-wingers that shouted him down — never mind) will complain that Cherry had a raw deal, and old hockey fans, who grew up with Don Cherry may miss him, but I’m hoping that what this says is that Canada, at least, knows that we can honor those that came before us without insulting those that make up the next generation.
But who interviewed Cherry to lament his “unfair” treatment? Why, Tucker Carlson, of course. Who knew that Carlson was such an internationalist?