ALGARY, Alberta — Don Cherry, Canada's dominant ice hockey announcer for nearly a quarter-century, appears on the air wearing wigs, funny hats and plaid-and-lavender Edwardian suits with four-inch starched collars.Posted on 06/05/2004 1:43:40 AM PDT by conservative in nyc
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ALGARY, Alberta — Don Cherry, Canada's dominant ice hockey announcer for nearly a quarter-century, appears on the air wearing wigs, funny hats and plaid-and-lavender Edwardian suits with four-inch starched collars.
His couture is shocking to the point of buffoonery. But it is his ideas that are really outrageous, at least to those who believe that to be Canadian is to shun controversy, ostentation or violence.
On the air and off, Mr. Cherry makes no bones about the fact that he likes his hockey raw with plenty of hard checking and fisticuffs. He second-guesses softhearted referees who call too many penalties. He deplores face visors, which are designed to protect players from eye injury.
On his "Coach's Corner" segments between periods of televised NHL hockey games, he feels no compunction about straying outside the boundaries of hockey in his commentaries. He preaches law and order, warns about the threats of multiculturalism to Canadian society and argues that Canadians should back the United States when it goes to war.
"I am extremely Canadian to the extreme, which most Canadians aren't," he said with no trace of irony while sipping coffee in his hotel room the morning after last Saturday's Calgary Flames victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning. "I'm like a kid that's got a $500 suit on stealing hubcaps. I'm old-time hockey, there is no doubt about it, more than anybody on the face of the earth."
Mr. Cherry is so brash, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation put his "Coach's Corner" broadcasts on a seven-second tape delay in February, a move that has been criticized by his fans as crude censorship. The CBC said it was forced to clamp down on Mr. Cherry after he used a vulgar term to ridicule players who wore face visors. Inserting a finger into the old rift between French- and English-speaking Canada, Mr. Cherry added while on the air, "Most of the guys that wear them are European or French guys."
A series of recent front-page stories in Canadian newspapers speculated that the CBC would fire him soon after the Stanley Cup playoffs. "I think it's 50-50," Mr. Cherry sighed, speaking of his possible firing. "If I start worrying about what I say, people will pick it up in a minute. I can play it safe, but I never will."
Mr. Cherry's antics might be dismissed if he were not Canada's most highly paid television celebrity and an icon whom people either love or hate. But he is popular enough that newspapers ran obituaries when the first of his three pet bull terriers died a few years ago.
Leaders of the Conservative Party asked him if he wanted to run for the House of Commons this year. He declined, though he says he would win by a landslide even though he has taken many unpopular positions on the air. What people like, and dislike, about Mr. Cherry is his directness. In a society where commentary is often softened with diplomacy, Mr. Cherry is always ready to blast away.
"This is absolutely asinine,'' Mr. Cherry said of the refereeing and "chintzy penalties'' of the first period of the second game of the Stanley Cup finals in a sequence made particularly colorful by his purple tie featuring Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird. "That period was a joke!''
He is no less outspoken about incidents of anti-Americanism in Canada. After thousands of Canadian fans booed and jeered the American national anthem early last year before two Montreal Canadiens games against the New York Islanders and the New Jersey Devils, Mr. Cherry went on the air the next weekend wearing an extravagant American flag tie.
"Fifty years of pride down the drain as far as I am concerned," he intoned in a segment that was commented on for weeks. "I feel so bad for what has happened."
Mr. Cherry's beginnings were modest. He was born in 1934 in Kingston, Ontario. His mother sewed uniforms for the Royal Military College, and his father was an electrician.
He made hockey his life as soon as he dropped out of high school to become a journeyman defenseman for minor league teams all over Canada and the United States. He was not much of skater, he admits, but he was, not surprisingly, a ferocious fighter who spent a lot of time in the penalty box.
During his 18-year career as a player, he managed to make it to the National Hockey League for one game, in 1955, for the Boston Bruins to replace an injured regular in the Stanley Cup semifinals against the Montreal Canadiens. No goals, no assists, but he did manage to give the Canadien star center Jean Béliveau a solid hit.
After his playing career, Mr. Cherry tried construction and selling cars with no success. Down and out, he said, "I got on my knees and I said, 'Lord, is this it?' And as God is my judge, a light came." That inspired him to make a hockey comeback, soon becoming a coach.
He worked his way up the minor leagues until he rose to coach the Boston Bruins for a half-decade during their glory years of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, earning NHL coach of the year honors for the 1975-76 season. After a horrendous year coaching the Colorado Rockies, he gave broadcasting a try in 1980 and made "Coach's Corner" the hottest television feature in Canadian sports to this day.
Today Mr. Cherry is a wealthy man who has made millions promoting a series of videos titled "Don Cherry's Rock'em Sock'em Hockey,'' opening a chain of restaurants, and doing commercials over the years pitching everything from home insulation to after-shave lotion. He is opening a hospice for chronically ill children in honor of his first wife, who died of cancer. Mr. Cherry seems to personify Canada's complicated relationship with hockey.
"We're very quiet, that's the way we are," he noted. "But hockey is not like that. It's a paradox that we love one of the most violent games in the world and people go wacko at the games."
Two generations of boys, and a growing number of girls, have grown up watching Mr. Cherry's musings during nationally televised hockey games. His celebration of take-no-prisoners checking is taken seriously by young players and peewee league coaches, to the consternation of some.
Mr. Cherry's critics say he is responsible for a growing level of violence in youth hockey and a proliferation of injuries. Roy MacGregor, a columnist for The Globe and Mail and a former youth hockey coach, said Mr. Cherry's commentary led to "boorish behavior, bad coaching technique, and it lessens the skill level of the game."
Mr. Cherry says the critics just don't understand hockey and the need for fighting. "The players like to do it, the fans like it, the coaches like it," he noted. "The only people who don't like it are the media."
He says he likes to read books about Hollywood personalities in his spare time. He is also a bit of a history buff, reading about Lord Nelson, Sir Francis Drake and T. E. Lawrence. "Every one of them got into trouble and were leaders of men," he noted. "They all had a tough end, and maybe that's what's going to happen to me."
Is the CBC really going to fire Grapes in the middle of an election? Couldn't that backfire against the Liberals?
If he is fired, he'll probably get snapped up by TSN (ESPN in Canada) or ESPN itself.
While I was growing up in Canada, Don Cherry was a bombastic asshole, a mouthy son of a bitch, wearing stupid suits with an attitude a mile wide. But I agreed with him.
Now that I'm here in the US, I consider him an icon. I catch him wherever and whenever I can. I'm sorry. ABC does for hockey what it does for news.
Running Conservative. No problem. Shoo in. Unfortunately Canada's National Governing Party is probably going to get back in once again because the right is so disconcerted and running around in little circles chasing its tail.
The Dalton Camp legacy is still playing strong.
About a month ago I saw a story where the CBC said they may not renew Grapes' contract. At that time Grapes replied that if he wasn't going to being working with the CBC that he wouldn't go to another network. Let's hope the CBC renews his contract. He's the best thing about Hockey Night in Canada!
He's the one reason I become a fan of hockey in the first place! :)
Not true, Harper and the Conservatives are kicking ass. JUST LIKE THE FLAMES, CHANGE IS ACOMING FROM THE WEST.
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