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Sports
In a changing Canada, Don Cherry’s firing is front-page news and
a Rorschach test
Canadian hockey sportscasters Don Cherry and Ron MacLean pose in 2016. (Mark
Blinch/Reuters)
By Amanda Coletta and
Ben Strauss
November 12, 2019 at 3:16 PM EST

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Outside the Paramount Fine Foods Center, a hockey arena in
this ethnically diverse suburb of Toronto, a storm was dumping snow and causing chaos
Monday night. Inside, parents of kids playing the country’s national sport discussed a
very different storm: the one that led broadcaster Sportsnet to oust longtime hockey
commentator Don Cherry after on-air remarks that were widely perceived to be anti-
immigrant.
“I don’t think they had a choice, unfortunately,” Gary Camilleri said before the
Mississauga Senators minor midget AAA team that he coaches took the ice. “The public
cries, and they have to answer.”
Cherry was fired Monday afternoon, ending a more than 40-year broadcasting career
that made him a singular figure in Canada — in hockey and beyond. Saturday night, on
his “Coach’s Corner” segment, which runs during the first intermission of the popular
“Hockey Night in Canada” program, the 85-year-old referred to Canadian immigrants as
“you people” and claimed that few people in Mississauga and downtown Toronto wear a
poppy to honor military personnel in the run-up to Remembrance Day, the country’s
equivalent to Memorial Day.
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“You people love — you, that come here, whatever it is — you love our way of life, you
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.”
Don Cherry fired from Sportsnet after criticizing immigrants on ‘Hockey Night in
Canada’

The firing made front-page headlines Tuesday from Winnipeg to Montreal. Tabloid Le
Journal de Montreal splashed “Bon débarras” across its cover, or “Good riddance” in
French.
“He was iconic,” said Ken Hitchcock, a Canadian who coached in the NHL for more than
20 years. “I know in Canada we’re a country of immigrants, and that’s what we are. And
that’s where society’s at now, [not] just in hockey but in every aspect of life. There’s a
real sensitivity toward that stuff that there wasn’t 20 or 30 years ago, but there sure is
now.”
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After Washington Capitals practice Tuesday, forward Tom Wilson, who grew up
watching Cherry, said: “I think hockey is changing, the world is changing. It is the end of
the era of ‘Coach’s Corner’ for sure. It probably won’t ever be the same without him.”
Indeed, it is difficult to overstate Cherry’s cultural relevance in Canada and in his chosen
sport. The former NHL coach and player became a far bigger figure after his transition
to broadcasting. He wore garish suits on TV and was a bombastic celebrity in a country
that has few of them. In a national survey in 2004, Cherry was voted the seventh-
greatest Canadian, edging out Wayne Gretzky and Alexander Graham Bell. He was
dubbed the Prime Minister of Saturday Night. Fans at NHL games in Canada would
leave their seats during intermissions to crowd around televisions in the concourse to
hear Cherry’s takes.
Longtime Sports Illustrated hockey writer Michael Farber recalled once talking to a
player in the Montreal Canadiens’ locker room who asked whether he had heard what
Cherry had said during a game. “I said: ‘How are they watching him? Were they
recording him somehow?’” Farber said in an interview. “Turns out they were watching
Cherry on TV during intermission.”
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In recent years, though, Cherry had become a touchpoint in a changing Canada, as his
commentary on Saturday nights grew more pointed and more political. Those who
believe in climate change were “cuckaloos.” Opponents of fighting in the game were
“turncoats.” Quebec nationalists were “a bunch of whiners,” and the Canadian
government’s decision not to enter the Iraq War meant “we’re just riding on [the
Americans'] coattails.”
“He was a Rorschach test,” Farber said. “People thought he was incredibly out of touch,
that hockey had evolved and he hadn’t. Other people thought he understood old-time
hockey better than anyone, that he stood for old-time hockey values but also what they
embraced as Canadian values.”
In the immediate aftermath of Cherry’s dismissal, a backlash was already fomenting on
talk radio and online, with #IStandWithDonCherry, #BoycottSportsnet and
#DonCherryWasRight trending on Twitter. And yet the Canadian Broadcast Standards
Council, the agency responsible for handling listener and viewer complaints, said it
received so many complaints about Saturday’s broadcast that its “technical processing
capacities” were exceeded.
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“Sports bring people together — it unites us, not divides us,” Sportsnet President Bart
Yabsley said in a statement Monday. “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. During the broadcast, he made divisive remarks that do not
represent our values or what we stand for.”
U.S. Soccer refused to pay women equally. It now could be facing a bigger cost.

Kristi Allain, a sociology professor at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, spent
three years watching and analyzing “Coach’s Corner” segments for research that
informed her dissertation on gender and Canadian identity in hockey. She said that “no
one should be surprised” by Cherry’s comments and that he has presented a “consistent
message” about his concerns over changes in Canadian society and hockey more
specifically.
“The fact that he has stayed on the air means that he’s not speaking to nobody,” Allain
said, noting that he has rarely faced blowback from sponsors or had trouble finding
publishers for his books or videos. “It’s not that he didn’t change with the times. It
speaks to deeper troubles in a largely fragmented Canadian population.”
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Cherry’s dismissal comes in the same year that Canada recorded its largest influx of
immigrants since World War I. The country’s changing makeup is, inevitably, altering
its sports culture. While hockey remains Canada’s most popular sport, a study from the
Solutions Research Group in 2014 found that newcomers to Canada are more likely to
enroll their children in sports such as soccer and basketball, which have lower barriers
to entry.
“I think the older I got the more difficult it became to watch him,” said Sunaya Sapurji,
managing editor of the Athletic Toronto. “And if you want to grow the sport — the NHL
has a ‘Hockey is For Everyone’ campaign — here was a guy who wasn’t on the same page
as that and to people who didn’t look like him."
Cherry’s ouster also caps a year in which questions around race and immigration have
been thrust into the national spotlight here, prompting sometimes uncomfortable
conversations and reflection.
In June, the Toronto Raptors defeated the Golden State Warriors to capture their first
NBA title. They did so with a roster made up of players from several countries — one
that commentators noted appeared to reflect the diversity of its fan base in multicultural
Toronto, where more than half of the population identifies as minority. The night before
the team’s championship parade, the province of Quebec passed a controversial law
banning public-sector employees from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs, turbans
or yarmulkes on the job. The legislation, the first of its kind in North America, has
drawn criticism across Canada and among rights advocates worldwide.
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Later in the summer, 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu became the first Canadian to win a
Grand Slam title when she beat Serena Williams at the U.S. Open. At a rally for
Andreescu in her native Mississauga, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked her
parents, immigrants from Romania, for “choosing Canada.” That same week, in the
middle of a federal election campaign, Trudeau apologized repeatedly after several
photos and video surfaced of him wearing brownface and blackface as a younger man.
Cherry’s ties to Mississauga run deep. He lives here and once owned and managed the
Mississauga IceDogs (now the Niagara IceDogs), the city’s Ontario Hockey League
franchise. The Paramount Fine Foods Center is located on Rose Cherry Place, named for
the broadcaster’s late wife.
Kofi Kwajah, whose son was playing Monday night, said he watched Cherry’s unscripted
jeremiad live. “At first, I was shocked when I heard it,” he said. He added, “All in all, the
guy is good for hockey.”
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Bruno Cristini, a real estate broker chatting with other hockey moms and dads, said
Cherry has been given “a bit of a long leash,” and that he would like to hear Cherry
apologize, saying he was “a little bit shocked” by his remarks.
“I love when he talks about hockey,” Cristini said, “and I prefer that he stick to hockey.”
Strauss reported from Washington. Isabelle Khurshudyan and Samantha Pell
contributed to this report.
Read more:
With the Nationals facing questions, the Capitals provide one set of answers
 Megan Rapinoe won a Woman of the Year award. She thanked Colin Kaepernick.
Dion Waiters’s $2 million gummy mistake is no laughing matter
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