Foster Hewitt, we need you: Don Cherry never outgrew childhood bigotry

Catholic New Times, June 6, 2004 by Mel Watkins

You can't be much of a columnist, I said to myself the other day, if you don't have a view on Don Cherry that you can inflict on the world.

I could claim it was just sports and nothing to do with politics, one of my alleged specialties, but even that lame excuse was blown off the ice when Deputy Conservative Leader Peter MacKay invited Cherry to run for them in the upcoming federal election.

And, incidentally, did Conservative Leader Stephen Harper not show what an uptight klutz he is when he feigned no interest in having the attention-grabbing Cherry run? Or did he just fear he might end up being Ron MacLean? But I digress.

Should Cherry be doing his rant on the "People's Network"? That other great Canadian, Marshall McLuhan, called radio a hot medium, appropriate for ranting, and TV, cool. Cherry is off-medium: he should be on private-hot-hate-radio. Even that great American, Walter Winchell, never successfully made the leap from radio to TV.

Cherry should never have been allowed on TV in the first place. His colourful garb is simply his attempt to pretend he's a TV person. Make him dress like the rest Of us and he'd be sent to radio fast.

The medium is the message, but there's still that matter of content. Cherry plays to the dark side of English Canadian culture. Within our little hearts there beats a carping dislike of Quebec that ill behooves us in this third millennium since (it is said) Christ died for our sins.

Cherry plays to the dark side of English Canadian culture

That French-English thing: it's ancient, with roots going back to Europe. When I was a kid in the Georgian Bay area in the 1940s, rude remarks about the French Canadians, and how they might be tough enough to play hockey but not brave enough to fight in our wars, were common coinage.

Don Cherry is just So Old. So am I. If I can outgrow that bigotry, why can't he?

The CBC likes to say that Cherry should stick to hockey and get off everything else. But I don't like listening to him on hockey.

Again, he plays to the lowest denominator. We're starting to have to really face up to the strong strand of violence that is part of the culture of hockey in this country. That won't be easy, and listening to Don Cherry only makes it harder.

When Todd Bertuzzi of the Canucks sucker-punched Colorado's Steve Moore and broke his neck, Cherry did one of his finger-wagging messages to the young. Never sucker-punch he said; always deal with these matters face-to-face.

Throw the book at Bertuzzi but don't penalize hockey as a whole, and resolve to clean it up. (Sorry, but doesn't this sound like the way the Bush Administration deals with abuse in Iraq?)

It's OK to fight, but don't kill anybody.

Excuse me. Violence is not so prominently promoted as an asset in baseball, soccer, football, tennis, lawn bowling, but they are all intensely competitive sports.

And do only the gutless wear visors is what is, no matter how cleanly played, a dangerous game? What's Cherry's position on cops wearing seat belts in high speed chases?

Maybe I just don't know anything about hockey. Don't get me started; I taught Bob Pulford and baby-sat Bobby Orr. I rooted for the Montreal Canadiens when I was a kid near Parry Sound, and that wasn't easy. I stuck with the Leafs through the dark days of Harold Ballard. I know exactly where I was when Paul Henderson scored his famous goal.

And, oh yes, once upon a time, I was a guest of Foster Hewitt's in the gondola at Maple Leaf Gardens on Young Canada night and introduced to the radio audience of Hockey Night in Canada. That greatest of all Canadians dressed like a gentleman and never ranted and raved.

Not once.

Not even on radio.

Mel Watkins is a political economist and activist, who speaks and writes on contemporary issues. Courtesy of Straight Goods.