Don Cherry: The last Canadian

Cherry’s fascination with British military history, which he often referenced on air, is a holdover from that old Canada, where it was taken for granted that Drake, Raleigh, Nelson, Wellington and the rest of his heroes belonged to us; or rather, we were heirs to their legacy. I remember particularly an episode of Coach’s Corner in which Cherry recounted a visit to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich where he saw Admiral Nelson’s coat with the hole from the bullet that killed him. He described standing transfixed, as though face to face with a holy relic while the crowds filed past indifferently.1If you doubt Cherry’s devotion, check out the very first line of his CBC biography: “The valour of his hero, Lord Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar taught Don Cherry to stand firm and to never give in—a lesson that would raise him from the minor leagues to prominence as one of hockey’s best-known stars.” (That biography, oddly, omits Cherry’s Moonlight Grahamish NHL career: One game played, no goals, no assists, no penalty minutes.) If Cherry’s syntax sometimes plays tricks on the Queen’s English, his meaning is never in doubt. In a recent piece promoting Cherry’s candidacy for the Order of Canada, Sean Speer captured his style well: “visceral, intuitive, and proud.” I would, however, demur Speer’s assessment that it “wasn’t cerebral or literary.” Cherry has read more than almost any contemporary television sports commentator—such are the benefits of even a half-hearted old-fashioned education and a life-long reading habit—and his vocabulary and on air references often showed it. The least interesting thing about Cherry are the controversies, mostly concocted by critics looking for an excuse to cancel him. No matter how offended they are or pretend to be, as Orwell admitted of Kipling, “even his worst follies seem less shallow and less irritating than the ‘enlightened’ utterances” of his period. Cherry, for his part, rightly has nothing but disdain for the “sophisticated” obfuscations of our cultural elites—the “pinkos”—who delight in chipping away at the foundations of our national institutions and picking apart our national narratives. Cherry wears his patriotism proudly on his sleeve—and on his lapel, his jacket, his tie, and pretty much anywhere his tailor can fit it. He is a staunch Monarchist—he loved the giant portrait of the late Queen at the old Winnipeg Arena and regretted that few community rinks displayed her portrait anymore—but no one would mistake him for a twee antiquarian. It’s just part of his Canada, the country he knew before those cultural wreckers, Pearson and Trudeau, their colonial inferiority curdled into petty resentment by stints at Oxford and the LSE, set about stripping the country of all reminders of its rightful parentage.2A damantio memoriae partially rectified by Stephen Harper’s restoration of the royal names of our air force and navy. Above all, what secures Cherry’s claim as the last Canadian original is the same thing that elevates him above the current crowd of Canadian luminaries: He is the living refutation of the idea that to be Canadian means having a negative identity, based self-consciously on not being something else. In contrast to the post-modern anti-nationalism of Justin Trudeau3“One of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, well, we’re not American.” and the brittle petulance of the Elbows Uppers, Cherry showed you can be proudly, defiantly, and unmistakably Canadian while rejecting the hand-wringing of Official Canada and their endless studies and symposia about what it means to be Canadian. Almost uniquely among our national figures, Cherry has never succumbed to the Americophobic pseudo-patriotism that too often afflicts our elites. He loves our neighbours so much he married one. Nor does he have an inferiority complex when it comes to the Old Country and the imperial roots that makes us distinctly Canadian. His patriotism is not ideological; it comes from the heart, as true patriot love must. It is an old-fashioned spirit that, nevertheless, has the power to attract young admirers because it is strong, true, and serious in an era of doubt and equivocation. When he is gone (and let the day be many, many years away), there will be no one left as immediately and recognisably Canadian as Cherry. He is the last Canadian original, at least until we recover the cultural confidence that made him.