Front Burner - Don Cherry, hockey and Canadian identity

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Hockey Night in Canada aired Saturday night without Don Cherry, while his firing stoked a national debate about hockey’s place in this country. Today on Front Burner, we talk to hockey fan Noha Beshir and retired sportswriter David Shoalts, who wrote Hockey Fight in Canada: The Big Media Faceoff Over the NHL.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. This one plunged deeply into our hearts, right? You know why? Because it's about relationships. Biggest thing, it's about relationships.

Don's and mine, the coach's corners and yours, yours and Don's. That was Hockey Night in Canada's Ron McLean in his first broadcast since John Cherry was fired. And since that happened a week ago now, it feels like there's been a national discussion taking place about what hockey means to this country. That debate, it's not always been civil. A cenotaph in Toronto was vandalized by someone angry that John Cherry had been fired. People demanded a CTV personality lose her job for saying it was her experience that hockey players were generally a bunch of white boys who tended to be bullies.

And everyone from federal political leaders to sports heroes have made some kind of statement. Today, why did this all strike such a nerve? I'm talking to Dave Schultz, author and former Globe and Mail columnist. He spent many years writing about hockey. And Noah Bashir, she calls herself a long-suffering Habs fan. And she looked up to Don Cherry until she felt betrayed by him.

This is Frontburner. Noha, Dave, thanks for being here today. You're welcome. So let's start with Ron McLean on Saturday night. He goes on Coach's Corner and he addresses the firing of Don Cherry and the events of the past week. And it kind of sounded to me like he was talking off the top of his head, which he quite possibly was.

But, you know, there was one person in particular that he was talking to, and let's have a listen. And that's what I'll say about you, Dawn. You know, I love you so much, and you always say you spoke like a 32-year-old American Hockey League player. You were always the captain, the leader of your hockey teams, the coach could count on to take care of the troublemaker, and you taught me to be that guy. And so here I am sort of standing up and taking this position. But that doesn't mean anything in terms of my respect for you or my judgment of you.

We will never do anything in the first intermission on Hockey Night in Canada. We have like the country to reimagine ourselves and there will be a possibility of this really bad unexpected thing to do some good things I hope but we we honour what you've meant to the game to the fact that you have been there for human beings and sentient beings just a fantastic human being and so I I love you very

much and and we honour you tonight in this in this last talk about A Coach's Corner. Dave Schultz, I'll throw to you first. What do you make of that? If you just look at the words, it was a very rambling sort of monologue that at times didn't really make a lot of logical sense. Yes, very much so, yeah. But I think that in itself showed how sincere Ron was. He was very conflicted, obviously, about the whole thing.

Because Don Cherry's been one of his closest friends for close to 40 years. But at the same time, you know, this thing really went off the rails, thanks to Don and, and, and time, you know, this thing really went off the rails thanks to Don and got, you know, over the line. And we've seen all the fallout. Noha, what did you make of Ron's comments Saturday night, particularly, you know, him addressing Don Cherry? I really don't envy him having to go up there the next week. I think we all have friends who we're very close with or people who we love who we don't necessarily agree with on everything so that was a really difficult position and like Dave said there was definitely some rambling he I don't um begrudge him anything

he did say what would have been nice would have been to hear something else added about the comments that Don made and why they were wrong. Because they were just, it was very much glossed over. Let me stop you there because I want to play you another clip, which I think is the closest that Rahm McLean came to addressing the substance of what got Don fired. There were steps that needed to be taken

because of what had been said by Don. And he didn't want to do those steps. So he made his choice, and I made mine. And then the next choice, which was a really hard choice, probably the sleepless nights all week are mostly about this. Don's my guy. I'm in a foxhole with Don, and I've decided to go one way and he another. And you say, OK, how can you choose principle over friendship? But I had to. You know, I thought a lot about falling on my sword too. And then I thought, no, but if I do that, I infer what happened was right somehow or that I'm going along to get along.

Okay, so Noha, tell me why that wasn't enough for you. Well, I'm glad he said that. But in no point in that clip does he actually address the substance of what Don said. He simply says it's wrong. But there was no addressing the substance of what he said. And a lot of people were very hurt over what Don said. And it's said on a national platform. And you have to say something to counteract that, to indicate that immigrants do contribute, that immigrants do respect veterans.

I noticed he went a bit further last week when he spoke on Sunday. Don Cherry made remarks which were hurtful, discriminatory, which were flat out wrong. We at Sportsnet have apologized. It certainly doesn't stand for what Sportsnet or Rogers represents. We know diversity is the strength of the country. or Rogers represents. We know diversity is the strength of the country. Dave, I wonder, like, who was Ron McLean speaking to on Saturday? Judging by the four minutes and 45 seconds of the monologue, I think most of it was directed at Don Cherry,

because this is a huge disruption in their friendship. And I think he was really really really affected by that i i don't want to come across as as sort of apologizing for ron mcclain but just in thinking of why he would would do it this way i i'm gonna guess that uh he may have thought that he addressed the hurt in what he said last Sunday night on Hometown Hockey. That maybe this time around he figured, now I'm going to sort of explain what other repercussions there were for me for this. And so that came out. Totally fair enough what Dave said, that he had mentioned it before on Hometown Hockey. It's just that Hockey Night in Canada is a complete other level, right? So more people are

watching Hockey Night in Canada than are watching Hometown Hockey. And people were tuning in this Saturday for this. Like I will say, I tuned in to watch this this Saturday. Exactly. Now I think there's probably where he ended up. And again, I really don't envy him the position he was in. Probably what I saw on Twitter was a lot of people saying, oh, he betrayed his friends. So people who didn't feel Don Cherry deserved to be fired felt he'd been betrayed. And then people who felt he deserved to be fired felt Ron McLean didn't go far enough. So it was almost as though he was trying to please everybody. And I think it kind of comes out somewhere in the wash.

Right. And let's unpack that concept a little bit more as this conversation goes along. I want to talk about another flare up in the story. On Tuesday, a TV personality on the CTV show The Social said this. This is Jess Allen. I don't worship at the altar of hockey. I never have. And maybe it's because of where I grew up. But there's a and going to a couple different universities, there's a certain type of person in my mind, in my experience, who does. And they all tended to be white boys who weren't, let's say, very nice. They were not generally

thoughtful. They were often bullies. So there was a very strong reaction to this. The Broadcast Standards Complaints Council, like, essentially said that they had to stop taking complaints, just like they did with Don Cherry. Fire Jessica Allen was trending on Twitter. One of the survivors of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash says they will no longer be speaking with CTV. Jess Allen apologized. She said she regretted saying that her experience is, is we're personal instead of the underlying, that they were specific episodes from determined moments. And my lived experiences certainly don't negate how much good the sport does

for communities and families across the country. Rest assured hockey families. I wasn't speaking about your sons and daughters, who I'm sure aren't bullies and I'm sure love the game as much as you do. CTV also released this kind of apology. They would like to apologize for everyone who was offended, but they also said that they wouldn't restrict hosts from offering their opinions, but also that they were listening to viewers.

Dave, I'm really interested to hear your perspective here as somebody who has been, you know, steeped in hockey for such a long time. Why do you think this touched such a nerve? This felt like a third rail. What happened here? Well, in certain quarters, yeah, it touched a nerve because, you know, there's a large chunk of Canadians who just lost what they consider one of their own when don cherry went down and so then to have uh have this broadcaster come in and dump on this segment let's call it the the old white males um i i i can get as annoyed as anyone else uh when people who aren't hockey fans or don't know a lot about hockey chime in with their opinions on this.

But in this case, you know, she was trying to say she wasn't speaking generally for everyone in hockey. So I'm willing to cut her some slack on that. And yeah, hockey is such that there are certain places you can go and that's exactly what will what will happen to you or what you will experience is what she was talking about. It's an all white culture and there's a certain amount of bullying going on. CTV was a little mealy mouth, but as networks always are, but at least it was like, we're apologizing, but we're not apologizing. But sorry, if you are angry that we're apologizing noah do you do you agree with dave there do you think that jess allen deserves to be cut some slack i i you everyone has

their own personal opinions right my opinion is that what she said was quite hurtful um i've encountered the more the bullying or this or that in the online hockey culture when my not that often even but when my kid played for a couple of years I was never made to feel other in that environment. I think people felt hurt because they were generalized. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. I want to get your perspective on this. I couldn't help but thinking

watching this. You know, you've got these two people, Don Cherry, Jessica Allen, and they both like maybe in this reductive way could symbolize two different kinds of Canadians, right? Like Don, this old school Canadian boy, Jessica, a downtown progressive. And that's how this debate felt like it was kind of playing out this week, like these two sides pitted against each other. But I also feel like there's so much that gets lost in the center of that. And Noah, do you think that there's like a lot of nuance there that is that is being lost I think most of the nuance got lost and it became this like a versus situation Jess Allen what she said versus what Dawn Sherry said and we missed an opportunity or we're missing an

opportunity to have a deeper conversation because I think in reality, whether you're a small town or in the big city, I mean, I'm sure the people that we are neighbors and the people we see at work and work with, we don't all have the same opinions. We don't all have the same ideas. You know, I can't help but think, and stop me if you think I'm wrong here, that your personal story might be a really good example of this nuance that's sort of missing from this conversation. Right. So for me, and I wrote in the tweet thread that kind of blew up that I kind of looked at hockey as a badge, like my Canadian badge. And I didn't mean by that that I intentionally sought it out as proof of me being Canadian. I intentionally sought it out as proof of me being Canadian. But it's because I loved it so much. And it just so happened to be this thing that you know, people say like as American as baseball and apple pie, to me, it was as Canadian as hockey. So I could watch the game. And I could watch Coach's Corner in in, you know, my early teens. And that was something that I could talk about with anyone. I could talk about it with, you know, friends at school, teachers. I had a friend that I used to call

her on the phone. This was pre-cell phone, of course. And I used to call her and hilariously, if her dad picked up the phone, we'd have like a five minute debate before the phone ever got to her about, you know, whether Ron Tugnet or Damien Rhodes should be the goalie for the Ottawa Senators. Sure. So yeah, this is, this was, and I, and this was the kind of stuff that I loved. And it was just, it was so, such an easy conversation to slip into with just about anyone. And so in my personal experience, I didn't find that I came across, you know, bullies or feeling unwelcome in hockey, in my one-on-one interactions or in my real life interactions.

Right, right. For you, it was a way to connect with people. Exactly. It was absolutely a way to connect with people. And it just so happened to be this amazing fast sport but at the same time then over time I would watch coach's corner and my interactions with hockey where I felt welcome and where I felt that it was open were very different than the things he was saying putting up barriers um you know, talking about Russians or Swedes or French Canadians or whatever. Our friends, the Russians, five of them were in the playoffs. They played 23 games and they had no goals. Eating a seal, a little baby seal. I mean, what do you eat seal?

I mean, come on, what are you, a savage, a barbarian? So the two didn't really go together. And so what did you do? Because you didn't stop watching eat, seal? I mean, come on, what are you, a savage, a barbarian? So the two didn't really go together. And so what did you do? Because you didn't stop watching hockey, right? No, no. I actually, over time, I basically found new voices who I felt represented the kind of hockey, the openness that I liked. You know, people who talked less about fighting as such a critical part of the mythos of the game and people who maybe included women sports reporters more in

their interviews, in their reporting, in that interaction. So I found bigger hockey community online than was available through Coach's Corner. Right. The idea that like the community itself is very diverse. And, you know, Dave, do you think that that's why people got so angry at Jessica? Because her comments seem to ignore all the stuff that Noha just explained, like forget Don Cherry, but like the positive aspects of hockey. The comments clearly came from someone who doesn't have a wide deal, a great deal of experience with what the hockey community is nowadays. I mean, not that I'm any great expert either. I grew up in a small rural township in the Niagara Peninsula, so you didn't get much whiter than the town I grew up in. But over the years, yeah, things changed. And that's part of the problem with Don Cherry.

And unfortunately, a large group of the people who listen to him, they didn't change with the times or refused rather to reach change with how things were changing. I think the one discouraging part of this is is that there's still a significant number of Canadians who think the way Don Cherry does. You know, as much as you were talking about nuance earlier, for example, like nuance on social media is a pipe dream. You can't do nuance in 140 characters? I know. But I will say, just as I sat back and sort of looked at all the reaction, and, you know, it struck me, yeah, it's different now and in a better way. It is a much more

diverse hockey culture we have nowadays. And that's for the better for all of us. I will say, you know, my husband is a sports reporter. He's written several hockey books. And I couldn't help but listening to him this morning talk about, you know, hockey leagues in Peterborough and Mississauga and Halifax that, you know, on the other side of this, we have seen hockey decline or at least stagnate in this country. And Noha, do you think that it's not speaking to like a wide? Do you think that it's hard for me to relate to that because I'm such a nut, but I will make this comment as someone who jumped on the Raptors bandwagon this spring. I knew nothing about basketball coming in. I thought, ironically, that it was quite dull to watch because there was too much scoring.

So then the scoring didn't matter. That was my perception going into it. Anyway, it was such a great story. And I started to watch and there were so many bandwagon fans. And the amazing thing was that that was okay. And we were all welcome. And it's funny, because in hockey, if you're a bandwagon fan, that's kind of looked down on. It's like, well,

you don't know enough about this. You're not old school enough. You haven't been here long enough. So why not welcome people? Why not make it wider? And it's not something I even realized was an issue until I paid attention to basketball and saw just how different it was in just, you don't know the rules. That's okay. Come learn while you're watching. Right. A bit different. If I could add one thing here, hockey's problem has also been economic. It's not a cheap game to play. I think hockey from all levels is doing a lot more to try and address that than they used to. And that's to their credit.

And that's from the NHL on down. But that's always going to be a problem. But they are at least trying to address it in some fashion now. I want to end this conversation by going back to Ron McLean. He was talking about reimagining Coach's Corner, but he also said on Saturday night, We have, like the country, to reimagine ourselves. We have, like the country, to reimagine ourselves. Noha, what would that reimagining look like to you?

What do you think he meant by that? I think that there's a lot of narratives that are repeated over and over, maybe not today specifically, but over decades that foster suspicion of immigrants or people who are different than us. And that's subconsciously built into a lot of our common narrative, a lot of our common culture, are just kind of an assumption that it's true. And I think we have to go back and question some of those things we assume are true that aren't necessarily true. Why is there a sense that someone who comes from another country is less Canadian than someone who was born here? Right.

So it's really just looking at these ideas that we've taken to be common sense and actually, you know, evaluating them and questioning them. And of course, if you look at it through that lens, it's no surprise then that this blew up this conversation about, you know, what it means to be Canadian, sort of wrapped in this sport, which has come to define this country, which is hockey, which maybe is not what this country means to a lot of people. Yes, absolutely. Okay, Dave Schultz, Noha Bashir, thank you so much for this conversation. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me. Another interesting piece of news I think is worth highlighting before we go today, as Simon Haupt at the Globe and Mail pointed out, after Ron McLean's comments on Coach's Corner Saturday night,

a commercial featuring a bunch of sports personalities, even comedians, singing Tom Connors' The Good Old Hockey Game came on. It was ostensibly about the collapse of the Women's Hockey League and Budweiser's decision to sponsor women's hockey. Well, it was different than the version that appeared online on November 7th. That ad featured Don Cherry and Ron McLean. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and see you all tomorrow.