Longtime Hockey Night in Canada “Coach’s Corner” host Don Cherry is the latest victim of cancel culture.
The former Boston Bruins head coach hosted a segment on the highly popular weekly Canadian television broadcast from 1982 up until last Saturday. SportsNet announced his firing on Monday after his comments about Remembrance Day poppies sparked outrage.
In Canada, as in the United Kingdom, people pay respects to military personnel who died for their country by wearing remembrance poppies, artificial flowers sold by veterans groups who donate the funds to veterans in need.
Cherry expressed his frustration with what he saw as a lack of people wearing poppies in cities like Brampton, Toronto, and Mississauga, specifically among the immigrant communities there.
“Now you go to the small cities. You know, those — the rows and rows — you people love — they come here, whatever it is, you love our way of life,” he said. “You love our milk and honey. At least you can pay a couple bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price for that.”
Surely, saying “you people” was not the best word choice, but firing him for his strong emotions here is absurd.
Cherry wants people to honor troops who gave their lives to protect their homeland and the globe from tyranny over the years, including allied troops who died in World War I and II. He wants to see people recognize that and be grateful for what those brave Canadians did, which allows the country to exist as it does today. Canadians live in one of the greatest countries that’s ever existed. Clearly, Cherry is proud of his country and would like to see others support it the way he does.
Although there are no statistics on the rate at which immigrants buy poppies, Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun estimated that only 10% of the people he saw out in downtown Toronto last Friday wore them. Of course, there are immigrants who wear the remembrance poppy and there are Canadian-born people who do not. However, when there is an opportunity to raise money for veterans and a large swath of the population refuses to help, regardless of where they were born, it’s easy to see why Cherry is frustrated.
Embracing a country’s culture is a key part of assimilating to it. Up until recently, there was a bipartisan consensus that assimilation is important for immigrants. Former President Barack Obama thinks it’s important, arguing in favor of it in April. He also said that American immigrants should learn English.
Some media outlets, like USA Today, cried racism at Cherry’s comments, but there’s one flaw there: immigrants are not a race. Unlike the United States, Canada’s primary source of immigrants is not Latin America. Canada gets immigrants from across the globe. Of the top-10 countries from which Canada receives the most immigrants, the United States, U.K., and France, majority-white countries, are on the list.
Cherry has had a line of controversial comments over the years, and people continued watching him. His employer should have let the market decide whether or not they keep Cherry on the air this time, as they had in the past. Instead, they immediately caved to the outrage mob.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
