Sen. David Richards: Hockey Icon Don Cherry Deserves the Order of Canada

Hockey commentator Don Cherry reports prior to the Pittsburgh Penguins playing the Detroit Red Wings during Game Two of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals at Joe Louis Arena, in Detroit, Michigan, on May 31, 2009. Getty Images/ Jim McIsaac

Commentary

In 1998, the year Canada’s men didn’t medal in hockey during the winter Olympics, many reporters came out against Mr. Don Cherry—blaming his vision of the game for the failure of our players.

There were many reasons why we lost that year, but I guarantee Mr. Cherry wasn’t one of them. In some ways it was the most predictable and spineless of reactions from our tribe of scribes, most of whom had scoffed in one way or another at Canadian hockey for years. Many secretly rejoiced when other teams won, especially the Swedes, and most believed that changing the game to European standards (whatever they were) would make hockey more acceptable to people who didn’t know the game, and who had no real interest in ever knowing it.

They pontificated and whined, told us the game had to become more moral, our players more skilled. They attacked Cherry relentlessly in the newspapers and on TV.

It was all nonsense of course; a momentary hysteria that takes hold and seems true. And sports commentators and reporters, noble creatures that they are, did pile on.

They had their followers, these reporters, who had often thrown Canadian hockey under the bus in an act of artificial courage, but the great majority of Canadians—from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Prince George, B.C.—who knew the game in their heart, also knew who they wanted to listen to. They knew the Canadian game held its own kind of generous dignity—that Canadians at their best showed how hockey could be played, not as a set of rules or theories but as a ballet, totally brave and life-affirming. They knew that Don Cherry knew this too. They knew our game was inspiring and inspired.

During that frenzy of calculated bloodletting, I asked an Ottawa newspaper if I could write an article on Cherry. They said “Of course, please do. Send it immediately.”

They did not know I was writing a defence of Don Cherry. I spoke about his immense understanding of the game, his open-heartedness toward everyone, and that his so-called intolerance masked a profoundly empathetic nature. That he was a patriot in a land so unused to patriotism we took it as an anomaly. That he visited our troops all over the world—he was our great ambassador—the true comforter of those of us far from home. And that (even at that time) he was no longer a young man. He did it as a duty almost, just perhaps a spiritual one. And he did it not for himself—as brash and as loud as his detractors wanted us to believe he was—he did it for Canada.

Hockey Night in Canada star Don Cherry signs heavy artillery during a Christmas Day visit to troops stationed at outposts in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Dec. 25, 2010. The Canadian Press/ Steve Rennie

I wrote that even when the Blue Jays were in the world series, their fans would switch channels to make sure they caught Coach’s Corner—not solely to be entertained, for he was the most entertaining, but to be informed. “I knew you’d switch over,” he said one night, with that characteristic self-affirmation, at the very moment my brother had switched the channel. Uncanny—no, not really. He knew his audience, and he loved them as they did him.

I also said he understood the game as well as any man or woman alive, and that he disliked the officious cant of international hockey and how it tried to diminish Canada’s voice in it. That best-on-best Canada was still overall the best at the game. That it was as unjust as it was unseemly that so many rose against him in unison when they had a chance to taste his blood, but that many of us could have predicted it.

I said all this in the op-ed I wrote. It wasn’t published. Thinking I was joining the crowd and shouting my Barabbas, they were surprised that I had written a defence of Cherry. They were silent. So after a week or so I phoned. They told me that enough about the issue had been published already and so they decided not to print it.

That was long ago. Canada went on to win a great many tournaments since then. Not one of Cherry’s detractors ever gave him the credit for those victories. Not one of his friends at CBC jumped to his defence when he was ousted. Not one. They squeezed everything they could from Grapes, and then left him alone. They want to forget him; they want us to forget him as well. There was no room for an old man who still believed that people should wear a poppy.

In the safe-space woke society we live in, it is best that no patriot, no truly great Canadian adorns their studios. Because if he did, the artificial and somewhat sickening mask of their so-called tolerance might fall off. No one who goes overseas to visit the military, no one who dares speak of Canadian greatness on the ice in the manner in which Cherry did, should inform us anymore. And he is now approaching 90 years old.

Whatever happens, we should realize Don Cherry has been betrayed by those who gained so much from him, took from him in one way or the other for a generation. The secret is, his detractors know this as well, and they are silent, hoping we will forget who he was.

There are at least two petitions going around for Don to get the Order of Canada. If anyone deserves it, he does. It should have been done by acclamation years ago. And I might paraphrase Sam Johnson: “Had it been earlier, it would have been kind.”

So for God’s sake, if such a petition comes your way, sign it now.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.