Front Burner - Don Cherry’s divisive legacy

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

On Monday, Sportsnet let go of Don Cherry after the hockey broadcaster called immigrants "you people", and claimed they don't wear poppies to honour Canadian veterans. This comes after a career filled with controversy, from anti-Quebecer sentiments to Cherry’s advocacy for fighting in hockey. Today on Front Burner, host Jayme Poisson talks to Postmedia sports columnist Scott Stinson about Cherry’s career, his controversial legacy, and what might happen next for Hockey Night in Canada.

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. Well, after nearly 40 years of co-hosting Hockey Night in Canada's Coach's Corner, Don Cherry has been fired. This all comes after comments he made on air Saturday.

Cherry started going off about people who don't wear poppies on Remembrance Day. I live in Mississauga. Nobody wears, very few people wear a poppy. Downtown Toronto, forget it, downtown Toronto, nobody wears a poppy. And then he said this. Now you go to the small cities, and you know, those, the rows and rows,

you people love, you that come here, whatever it is, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple of bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys pay for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. Condemnation was, well, very swift. And after an initial apology, a second statement came Monday from Cherry's employer, Roger Sportsnet. This time they announced he was stepping down. Today, Scott Stinson, a national sports columnist with Post Media, is joining me.

And we're going to talk Don Cherry and his controversial legacy. This is FrontBurner. Hi, Scott. Hey, Jamie. How are you? Good. Thanks for doing this with us tonight. I know it's been a busy day for you. No problem. Okay, so let's start here.

On Monday afternoon, this statement comes out from the president of Sportsnet, Bart Yabsley, on Twitter. And it says, Sports brings people together. It unites us, not divides us. Following further discussions with Don Cherry after Saturday night's broadcast, it has been decided it is the right time for him to immediately step down.

And then right after that statement comes out, Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington says he spoke with Cherry and he's not backing down. Here's the quote. I know what I said and I meant it. Everybody in Canada should wear a poppy to honour our fallen soldiers. Are you emotional about all this or are you okay?

Oh yeah, no, hey listen, this is the way nothing can do. Let me put it this way, if you can get fired by the Boston Bruins, you can get fired by anybody. Okay, initial reactions here. Well, I was surprised, I guess, at the speed with which this went down, although not surprised in the sense of that there was a kind of an intractable position here. What Cherry said the other night was already like swiftly denounced by both Sportsnet and even by Ron McLean, his co-host. Don Cherry made remarks which were hurtful, discriminatory, which were flat out wrong. I owe you an apology too. That's the big thing that I want to emphasize. I sat there, did not catch it, did not respond. So after that happened

yesterday, being Sunday, it seemed like, well, something's got to give here. Either Don Cherry is going to have to apologize or they're going to have to move on and I obviously he decided he did not want to walk back any part of what he said and so we're left with what we have today which is that they're they're moving on just for people who are just coming to this story I just want to parse through some of Cherry's comments briefly so you know first on Saturday night he starts by saying that people in Mississauga and downtown Toronto don't wear poppies. Downtown Toronto, forget it, downtown Toronto. And so what do you make of that? Well, I think the implication is that he's saying there are certain types of people that he doesn't see wearing poppies.

are certain types of people that he doesn't see wearing poppies. And when he says people in Mississauga and people in downtown Toronto, I think it's pretty clear that he's referring to people of different racial backgrounds. And that was emphasized by the you people remark and the, you know, who come from wherever. Like, that's where you're going, oh, that's what he means. Right. When he went a little bit further and kind of drawing it between people from elsewhere and people from here, that made clear that that's what he was talking about.

And that's where the comments became particularly untenable. Right. You people that come here, you love our way of life. If you love our milk and honey, at least you could pay a couple of bucks for poppies. He also talked about, you know, when you go to small cities, small towns, you see rows upon rows of poppies. He also talked about, you know, when you go to small cities, small towns, you see rows upon rows of poppies. What did you get from that? Again, you're sort of going,

you know, he's saying it without really coming out and saying it. Yeah. The people from the suburbs look one way, they don't wear poppies. But when I go to the small towns, you know, without actually saying it, where they're more white, that's where I see poppies now i just want to add to jamie like i think that's a ludicrous statement from a factual standpoint there are lots of people of any kind of color racial background whatever you want to say immigrants non-immigrants who wear poppy of course he's roundly criticized here right like mayor of mississauga bonnie crombie and mayor of toronto john tory basically reiterate what you just said like what is this guy talking about he has no idea what he's talking about questioning the devotion of

newer immigrants to this country. Please apologize to new Canadians who are very proud new Canadians and are also very proud of the rich history of our veterans and proud that they came to Canada because of the rights and freedoms we all enjoy. And that's why they chose us. And this also struck a chord because so many people of colour, including Indigenous people, have fought for Canada, particularly in the First and Second World War. Yeah, I mean, this is part of where the story is particularly uncomfortable because there are all sorts of examples of people of different backgrounds, people of different races, examples of people of different backgrounds, people of different races, who have had, you know, frankly, much more involvement with Canadian military than Don Cherry ever had. And he is,

he has very much been a spokesman and an advocate for them. And that is all admirable stuff. But the idea that you have to have had some specific, you know, frankly, you have to have a poppy on your sleeve or on your lapel to show your support for the Canadian military is ludicrous because any number of people could have sacrificed their own well-being, put themselves forward, have family members who are doing that kind of thing, and you can be from any background. I want to go back for a second because, you know, Don Cherry has been in this role for more than 30 years. And can you explain to me why was he so popular? You know, I say this as someone who doesn't watch a lot of hockey, right? Like, I haven't watched a lot of Coach's Corner.

I know about his outfits. I know about his controversial comments in the past. But what's his appeal? I always kind of look at it as he became kind of the icon that he was because he was so resolute about his Canadian-ness and the Canadian-ness of hockey. He became a guy who always insisted that hockey was our game and the Canadians had a certain way of playing it. The leading scorer is always Canadian. Most of the players on the Stanley Cup champion are only Canadian. You know, the tough prairie boy kind of ideal.

Here was a guy who was unabashedly willing to tell you that hockey was Canada's game and that we were the best at it and that nobody else understood it the way we did. And if you were a Swede or a Russian or a Finn or even an American, you didn't have the same claim to the game that a Canadian did. What is this, hockey night in Canada or hockey night in Russia? I'm sick and tired of hearing how great they are.

They're down 3-1. They died. The Fabulous Five died. They are sucked and they always have sucked. We have the Hockey Hall of Fame. We put 75% of the players in the National Hockey League. And frankly, that's a message that I think got a lot of people behind him. And then he also espoused a particular style of hockey, more fighting, more physical, more tough guy thing, that a lot of people bought into, too.

Well, let's talk about that because this has also been controversial too. I want to get into some of his controversies. And one of them is that he was sort of an unapologetic proponent of fighting. Now, in the old days, what would happen would be somebody grabbed Ronek, give him a couple of cups, they'd have a fight and thing would be over. All forgotten. But now you can't do that because the instigator rule. Something that became more and more difficult to defend as we saw like greater evidence

connected to like the detriments of concussion. Yeah. Cherry was one of the last people to insist that if you're removed fighting from the game and if you're removed the really violent collisions that you would somehow lose an integral part of the sport and that the game and if you remove the really violent collisions that you would somehow lose an integral part of the sport and that the game wouldn't be the same anymore and there'd be more people slashing and hooking and doing those kind of things because you needed to have fighting as some sort of outlet gretzky says he has more stick work on his body in one international game that he does in the whole year of the National Hockey League. So you're saying fighting is what, some kind of therapeutic value?

Supposing you spear me in the groin, right? I can't drop my gloves to straighten you out. The first time the referee's not looking, you'll spear him. And, you know, eventually the game kind of legislated that stuff out anyway. But you could say, you you know five years ago he was essentially espousing that the game should remain a game that allowed players to put their health at significant risk of brain injury and and that that in and of itself was something that i actually to be honest i don't think he's ever really changed his position from there yeah let's talk

about some of these other controversial moments. He's referred to Quebec nationalists as whiners, and at another point said they don't want our language. Tearing the fabric of our nations apart. Now look, you don't want to speak English down here. You don't want universities down here in English. You don't want signs up. So tell me more about his history of criticizing French Canadians.

There'll be a lot of comments in the French Canadian media in the coming days saying, well, it's interesting that we've been saying these things about him for so long and he was allowed to remain on the air as long as he did. So yeah, he's been, the French Canadian thing was kind of part and parcel of the anti-European sentiment that you often heard him talk about. Right, right. He's also been criticized for talking about Europeans replacing Canadian hockey players in North American leagues. They don't check, they don't hit, they don't fight, and they don't score.

He also, frankly, has lamented those players in the NHL as well and gone so far as to say things like, you can't win a Stanley Cup if your captain is not Canadian and and if you don't have if you have too many if you're relying too much on on Swedes or Russians as your star players you'll never win and eventually you know those things became objectively not true when teams with Swedes as their captains and Russians as their captains did win the Stanley Cup. And like with so many things with him, he's kind of, once he has a strong position on something,

he doesn't really soften it. Right. I mean, speaking of the comments that he made on Saturday night, you know, he said something like almost 30 years ago to the Fifth Estate back in 1990, that Canadians are, quote, ticked off at the foreigners coming over earning the dough. I just say what I think, and it's the way I think. You can say it's bigotry if you want. I don't think it is. I'm pro-Canadian, more so than I'm anti-Soviet or anti-Swedish. I mean, this is kind of Don Cherry.

That angle of, I guess what you'd call like his politics, have often been fairly buried amid a guy who's generally known for his hockey views. It's been more in recent years where some of that stuff has come out a bit more often. He was a vocal supporter of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. I say he's going to be the greatest mayor this city has ever seen, as far as I'm concerned, and put that in your pipe, you left-wing kooks. He has said that he would have voted for Donald Trump if he could have done such a thing. And what am I going to say? I don't like Trump? I like Trump.

I like his blue collar, guys that voted for him, middle-class guys that worked on construction. So we've seen more in recent years that the Don Cherry political view is a pretty stridently anti-immigrant type position that you see in, well, frankly, which is I guess now a bit more mainstream in today's day and age. 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. Rogers has taken a lot of heat over the last couple of days, but the CBC has taken some heat as well. They were Cherry's employer for 35 out of his 39 years on the air. And what are your thoughts on that, that there have been criticisms directed towards the CBC here? There was always an uncomfortability when he said, you know, whether it was anti-French Canadian or anti-European things on the public broadcasters' airwaves, because they kind of seem like they have a bit of a higher purpose in terms of what it is that the CBC does. So it was always uncomfortable. And I'm sure he must have had colleagues who felt that way

about some of the things he would say in the years when he was a CBC employee. CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson, in an interview on Monday, he did admit... There were occasions, certainly, when we had the rights to Hockey Night in Canada, when I was in this role, and had to say often through the years that he does not speak for CBC. He didn't then, and he certainly doesn't now. He also said in a statement to us, I just want to get your thoughts on, that any decisions made regarding Don Cherry while CBC held the national rights for NHL hockey were made in the moment on a case-by-case basis.

Because none of the individuals who made those decisions are with the CBC anymore, it would be unfair of us to speak on their behalf. Yeah, I mean, that's a fair point. Can't really hold the present people accountable for what he might have said or not said. But having said that, the issue with him kind of that built up over his time at CBC, I think it is fair to say, was he probably felt somewhat bulletproof, because every time he did step in it, he was essentially allowed to continue on relatively unscathed. And I talked to him a few times. And it was fairly clear that like, he basically had this section of time carved out every week

and he was allowed to say what he wanted he chose the topics it wasn't like there was vetting it wasn't like uh there was a script that he provided with anybody beforehand to say here's the points i'm gonna make bang bang bang there was a real thing where don cherry felt like don cherry was gonna say his thing every Saturday night and everyone was fine with that and so to the extent that CBC played a role in allowing him to build up that sort of infallibility that he probably felt he had that's the thing where today I think they could probably say yeah we maybe should have stepped in a little bit sooner and reined him in and and realized that letting him say whatever he want was not necessarily the

best thing for, for obviously for him over the long term. Okay. And I just want to know, like, even though Rogers produces hockey night in Canada now, CBC airs it. So on Monday,

the CBC said Cherry's remarks were divisive, discriminatory and offensive, and that they respect sports and that's decision that this was the right time for him to step down. You mentioned before how this is political, right? Like some of what Don Cherry says, some of the more controversial remarks that he makes tap into these political conversations. And I spoke earlier today to Bruce Arthur, sports columnist at the Toronto Star, about support for Don Cherry. to Bruce Arthur, Boris columnist at the Toronto Star,

about support for Don Cherry. And he's been getting a lot of responses from readers with regards to this column that he recently wrote, which called for Cherry to step down. And he says support fell along political lines. I want to play you a clip

of what he had to say and just get your thoughts. It is striking, though not surprising, but striking, how closely it hews to political lines, how specifically conservative defenders of Don Cherry are, how they use the conservative buzzwords that you see on the internet everywhere, right? Like you're a soy boy, you're a globalist.

You're a snowflake. You're a liberal mouthpiece. Yeah. You're a snowflake. And Don's become a symbol of the culture war. If he is ejected from Hockey Night in Canada before his time, and for some people it will always be before his time, he will be seen as a victim of the politically correct culture. He will be seen as a symbol of a real Canada for a lot of people. When explicitly, like think about what we're talking about.

What did he say? He separated Canadians into implicitly Anglo-Saxon Canadians who live in small towns and the brown people who populate our cities. That's the Canada he separated good and bad Canadians into. Okay, so now he's actually been ejected. So this is after this announcement. Do you think Bruce has a point here? Yeah, I think he does. I write a column that says Don Cherry shouldn't have said what he said.

And immediately some of the response is, well, I bet you voted for the liberals. And it's like, what does that have to do with anything? Like, one's voting intentions should not be part and parcel of where you come down on what Don Cherry said about wearing poppies and immigrants. about wearing poppies and immigrants. And I think it is true that there is this sort of idea that what he said represents a small C conservative view. But this idea that if you if you're criticizing them, then you're just being some super woke liberal who just wants to have everything politically correct. Right, like the free speech police. Yeah, I mean, look, it is free speech. He was allowed to say what he wanted to say. And from a very commercially driven response, which I think is that probably the sponsors of his segment and the company that employs him realized that they didn't want to be associated with these views anymore. To me, that's where this thing has come down. It's in fact like a perfectly free market kind of thing. He said his piece. He didn't want to apologize for it.

And there was a consequence for that. Tell me a little bit more about that. Like, why do you think this tipped the scales for Sportsnet, like, and the sponsors? You know, why was this the line? It was just really stark, you know, the divisions that he was making there. You know, whether he really sat down and thought about it and wanted to kind of put it in quite those sharp terms. Well, he's certainly standing behind it.

How appropriate, though, that I get fired on Realm of West for remembrance. And Realm of Melody, my ex-bots said, one thing, I bet you the poppies have grown. Yeah, well, that's what I mean. So whether or not he originally meant it to be like that, the fact that people have obviously gone to him

and said, here's the problem, it's not about saying, I think people should wear poppies. It's about what you said in the, you know, in the greater part of that conversation. And the fact that he hasn't been willing to acknowledge that, the consequence of that is you can no longer do this job. And we're not going to stand behind you and put you back there next Saturday night to pretend like none of this ever happened. And do you think largely, you know, Canadians will be accepting of that? Like, I'm not talking about these like deeply,

deeply political people who think that this is like a win for snowflakes. I'm talking about the people who just see this guy as an icon, right? Like as an important figure in Canadian history. Maybe they haven't always agreed with his comments, but, you know, he's played an important role in their lives. Do you think they'll accept this? I think ultimately the number of people who watch Hockey Night in Canada regularly and really found themselves glued to whatever it was that Don had to say on a given Saturday has dwindled over time because he's, it's a lot of the same old hits. Cakes in Ontario, boy, Taylor Hall.

He is, he put that, watch the play here, Dred Skull, just you say salsa cabasa. You know, and, and I don't think he's really added all that to the repertoire in the last

10, 15 years of his career, which is perfectly understandable for somebody who's 85. I guess what I'm saying is I don't think there's actually going to be a huge chunk of the viewership that deeply misses them but i think people will be disappointed and kind of sad that this is the way it has ended and i think that's kind of the really unfortunate part about the story is that i think there was probably an opportunity to have don cherry go out uh much more gracefully many years ago, and certainly several opportunities where contracts were renewed that they could have just said, you know, now's the time.

What do you think is next for Hockey Night in Canada? Do you think it will try to reinvent itself? You know, I do keep thinking about the idea that, like, you know, my understanding is hockey is sort of flatlined in this country. Like, this is a sport that probably does need to reach, you know, more people in this country. Yeah, a couple things. I think Hockey Night in Canada is, like, they're not going to try to replace Coach's Corner with some similar version of it. I just I cannot imagine that come Saturday night, Ron McLean will be sitting there and they'll have some that segment in that format for all time they'll probably just do a regular intermission like they do every other hockey broadcast they do because

they do lots of them on sportsnet to that other point about growing the game and having to change i mean it is absolutely true that the demographics in canada have changed in a way that doesn't support continued growth of hockey. It's become very, very expensive, especially for kids in like competitive leagues. It's not a sport that if you're a second generation, you know, a new Canadian type, the barriers to entry are all there. And so this is not a secret. Hockey Canada is aware that this is something they need to figure out. And in that sense, this is really a part of that story that kind of underscores that. Like if you ever wanted to say there's a demographic that seems to think hockey is for one certain kind of person, it would seem to be the

person who is insisting today that Don Cherry's been hard done by. Okay, Scott Stinson, thank you so much. No problem, Jamie. Thanks a lot. All right, well, the National Hockey League has also weighed in here. They released the following statement on Monday. While we recognized Don Cherry's four decades of service broadcasting NHL games, today's decision was a justifiable response to his comments on Saturday night. The opinions he expressed are in direct conflict with the values of diversity and inclusion that we embrace as pillars of our sport. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and see you all tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.