I’m sure Ron MacLean is a decent man. I’m equally sure that Don Cherry is too.
There’s no middle ground now. With ‘Poppy-gate’ and the fallout from recent events, observers are choosing sides: Team Cherry or Team MacLean?”
Cherry, as most know, evolved from being a bombastic hockey coach who sneered at the media to becoming a media star who sneered at anyone who thought differently than he did. But he did so honestly — out of principle. Nonetheless, he was always regarded as a risk-taker.
Sooner or later, Cherry’s high-wire act was going to see him stumble and cross a line that would force the hand of his always-paranoid employers at Rogers.
And so, on November 9, 2019, he did — or didn’t — depending on one’s point of view, cross that line. While trying to encourage more Canadians to invest in a poppy as Canada’s Remembrance Day — honouring soldiers who were injured or killed — approached, Cherry lost focus of his big-picture message to all Canadians and narrowed it to a perceived cheap shot at new immigrants when he said:
“You people that come here … You love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that! These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada! These guys paid the biggest price.”
Notwithstanding the fact that social rants have no place on a hockey broadcast, had Cherry maintained his big-picture message and aimed it at all Canadians, he may have survived.
Within 48 hours of that rant, however, the Rogers-owned Sportsnet network announced that Don Cherry had been fired.
Over to you, Ron MacLean. Given a choice between supporting Cherry and going down with the ship or throwing Cherry under the bus, many believe MacLean opted for the latter when he said:
“Don Cherry made remarks which were hurtful, discriminatory, which were flat-out wrong. We know diversity is the strength of the country. We see it in the travels with our show and with Hockey Night in Canada. So, I owe you an apology, too. That’s the big thing that I want to emphasize. I sat there, did not catch it, did not respond.”
As with all things in life, as time moved on, so too did this wild Canadian controversy. But the Cherry–MacLean relationship has remained sour ever since. After all, Cherry was fired while MacLean saved himself.
We now fast-forward to July 11 of this year, when Ron MacLean surprisingly reignited the story via his comments in a stunning Kingston Whig-Standard article. MacLean suggested that while on a road trip, Cherry endured a pneumonia scare that included a visit to a Boston hospital. MacLean also suggested that Cherry’s poppy rant had been part of a calculated effort to engineer his exit from the long-running Coach’s Corner segment.
It didn’t take long for one of Cherry’s loyal supporters — Toronto Sun writer Joe Warmington — to fire back with a column of his own. In the article, Cherry denied spending time in the hospital, denied the exit strategy accusation, and expressed his disappointment with MacLean.
Once again, interested observers began taking sides. And so too will hockeyspy.ca, opting to support Team Cherry over Team MacLean.
Here’s the odd thing about Ron MacLean’s recent comments: While speaking on the long-running Toronto Mike’d podcast about his own personal approach to ethics, MacLean had this to say:
“God knows I study it endlessly. I read Montaigne, and I read Cervantes and Shakespeare and Harold Bloom. And I read Joseph Heller, and I read Bill Moyers and Margaret Somerville and lots of John Ralston Saul. My whole life has been reading about ethics — to try and understand Dershowitz, to try and understand how we get rights from wrongs.
There’s not much opportunity to use this knowledge, but it’s forever in the back of my mind in every interview I do. And what I’ve really sort of gleaned from my quest for wisdom is: wisdom is knowing what to overlook. Not to correct, not to shape — it’s knowing what to overlook. So, I will provide the vehicle for you to be your best. And then I will hopefully know to overlook it, if it’s not what’s right.”
If, as Ron MacLean suggests, his approach to ethics is always in the back of his mind — what is so ethical about revealing Don Cherry’s private health information? And what is so ethical about disclosing Don Cherry’s alleged exit strategy, even if true?
And if it’s not true, what is so ethical about planting a false narrative that would once again make Cherry look bad, while also supporting MacLean’s decision to turn his back on Cherry when he apologized on-air back in 2019?
Don Cherry has always been a tell-it-like-it-is, like-it-or-not personality. Highly principled people like that don’t just quit. They don’t look for weaselly, weak-kneed strategies to escape from anything. They’d rather go down swinging. If Don Cherry wanted out of his role on Coach’s Corner, he would have simply stood up and said so. And, frankly, many people closer to this story than we are believe that his superiors at Rogers would have been more than happy to accommodate him.
As for Ron MacLean, I’m not so sure his self-described devotion to the study of ethics can be described as time well spent
