To a Canadian icon.
Sun- Nice thing about free speech is we can say this: Happy 90th birthday, Don Cherry!
This may be the most important part of what the Cherry saga exposed. There is a double standard in Canada, where conservatives are not allowed to express their views the same way as progressives.
Some can wear blackface or fire a female Indigenous cabinet minister who won’t break the law to protect the government or call people names far worse than using the words “you people” and yet keep rolling.
Free speech, not coaching the Boston Bruins, is what defined Cherry and why he was so popular. In the end, he showed there is only freedom of speech tolerated if it’s allowed by the mob, and he went out with his head held high because he did not buckle to their pile on.
Yes indeed. He wasn’t right about everything but he was right about most things.
Loved that he stuck to his principles.
Happy Birthday Mr. Cherry!
Don Cherry is a great Canadian icon. He has more worth in his little finger than the entire filthy, degenerate Lib/NDP establishment.
Archie Bunker in curtain clothes.
No. A realist. You’re the bigot. Now piss off.
Actually, I though Steve was giving Don Cherry a compliment. I stand corrected.
I can’t say in my storied life that I ever met Grapes, but I did actually work with his partner Ron, and that was just after Grapes’ dismissal.
Boy, was that awkward. Had to keep my lips sealed during that episode, tell you what…
Says one of the biggest idiots on SDA. Go frack yourself, you lefty stooge.
Get bent Steve. I rarely comment but follow Kate’s page very closely. Compelling me to say something shows there’s something special about you.
Don Cherry wasn’t right about everything. But he had principled thinking and shared the unvarnished truth in a superb way.
You wouldn’t get it. How possibly could you?
BigD(ick)
Lighten up idiot, Steve was just having a bit of fun. As to Archie Bunker, was NO bigot,or Racist, so being compared to an American Icon like him , is a positive. As to “curtain clothes”, fair comical call out. Don dressed ridiculously, and I am a Cherry fan. Now got back in yer closet and pound that bible BOY.
Talk about awkward…
GYM… we got to stop meeting like this.
GYM.
Not sure why you’d assume I’m an idiot. You been talking to my wife? Ha.
Lighten up yourself. Carrol O’Conner was a hell of a man, but comparing Don to his character Archie is just pathetic. And I admired All In The Family for what it achieved, especially in that time period.
Carry on.
I stopped watching NHL hockey when they fired him. Haven’t seen a game since. The firing was bad enough, but the complete silence from players, coaches, and commentators, past and present, made my decision easy. One guy, Bobby Orr, had the decency and courage to speak out. The rest are cowards.
Me too. Without Don, Hockey Night in Canada was just hockey and not very good hockey most of the time. Haven’t watched a game since. And that Ron Maclean…what a weasel.
Coach’s Corner was the last piece of honest, no spin broadcasting the CBC network did in English. No wonder it had to go.
Yep, firing Don Cherry was the day Hockey Night In Canada died. Haven’t watched a game since
It just wasn’t the same experience afterwards. I totally lost interest in the product. Can’t say that I miss it, though. The wokeness that infested the league was the turning point. I stopped subscribing to the sports channels for the same reason.
Happy Birthday, Don. May you have many, many more!
I really enjoy the female hockey analysts giving their deep, deep, deep insight into the games.
Everybody watched Coaches Corner. It was as big as the game itself.
The pissant Bart Yabsley (Sportsnet) fired Grapes. He found his remarks “offensive and discriminatory.” The other half of CC was the coward and backstabber Ron MacLean.
Cherry was a thorn in the side of the CBC from day one because he represents everything that they despise. A free thinker who speaks his mind yet can admit when he is wrong, unapologetically patriotic with a sense of personal honour, and feeling a duty to teach youth the proper Canadian way to play hockey instead of worshipping the Europeans and Soviets for their aversion to physicality. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was Cherry alone that was responsible for the financial success of the only profitable show on the whole network, they would have fired him decades ago.
Chris
BOOM!
Interesting. Have a couple of grandbrats who are in very junior leagues and enjoy watching them. Youngest grandbrat – female – apparently is very adept (when she chooses) at going into the corners against the (usually larger) male opponents and really digging in. Other hockey parents have – so the family says – commented on her grit; my comment is that she practices on her older brother. Kid, when asked, says she enjoys the scrums.
I miss Don and common sense. When I watch HNIC, I generally record the game so I can fast forward through everything but the game missing Ron and his panel of smarmy nitwits. Living in the US, you never hear the score to ruin the effort. LOL
By they way, outlaw “the Michigan”.
I hate ‘the Michigan’ as well. Denigrates the game.
Don Cherry should be considered for the five dollar bill – A fitting tribute to a real Canadian – Happy birthday Grapes – You have that something Trudeau and his ilk will never have – You have class –
I agree Don Cherry is all class! He was telling the immigrants something that was important! The boys who fought in the wars , put their lives on the line and gave us a country to be proud of!
The immigrants that come here for that freedom should wear a poppy on Remembrance Day!!
Ron Maclean threw him under the bus and in my opinion acted like a weasel! He was a coward and didn’t stand up for his friend!
Of course Ron’ s behaviour suits the Liberals and matches the way they are destroying Canada!
In 2012 Roger’s Sportsnet paid over 5 billion for the rights to broadcast Hockey Nite In Canada. They outbid cbc for the rights ( WTF was the cbc bid?)
Once the cbc realized it lost it’s flagship program it entered on it’s knees into an agreement to have HNIC broadcast from it’s main Toronto studio with Sportsnet producing, having complete editorial control and getting all advertising revenue. So basically cbc gets 12 years of FA out of the deal except the facade of having it on the network.
Rogers has been bleeding red ink on the HNIC contract since the outset. The contract expires in 2 years. It is widely believed that Roger’s wants out to focus on Blue Jay’s baseball.
Enter the cbc. What are they going to bid to get back the NHIC rights? It’s a major money losing proposition but you know they are in it up to their tits. It’s their biggest most popular product. Why are they in this thing? Why are they in sports anyway?
I could go on but you get the picture.
I always enjoyed Cherry on HNIC. He’s the only commentator that understood the Homeric aspects of the sport. At the Frozen Four tournament in Providence in 1980, the feature speaker at the 4-team dinner banquet was a classics professor from Brown University. As he was introduced I had a sinking feeling it would be a chaotic bun-tossing disaster. But no. He was brilliant. He took them back to the plains below Troy to the battles and ever-shifting momentum of battle spirit connecting it to the team emotional dynamics of courage, despair, rage and brotherhood in hockey. At the end the professor drew a boisterous standing ovation.
Only Don Cherry captured this pathos and ethos of the team sport. He was primordial.
That said, in my view he was simply too old and stiff-minded to continue. The deeper tragedy is that he had no successor. Did Ron the Weasel learn nothing in all those years? Et tu, Ronnie?
“Too old and stiff minded”…..Knowledgeable, sane and rational. Words that do not mean much today.
Sadly, far too many Canadians have more in common with Ron the Weasel than Don Cherry.