Cornered

by Ron MacLean

  She replied that the CBC had reflected and thought it was in the best interests of both parties—why disturb a relationship that has been so successful? They felt that maybe, with a little more effort, we could come up with something that would be suitable for both sides. Meehan loved it. Later, he told me, “It doesn’t get any better than that.”

  On October 4, I spoke to William Houston at the Globe and Mail. I said I felt “a great overwhelming sense of appreciation for the viewers. It was typically Canadian. Everybody went to bat for me. What can I ever say to thank them?”

  In the end, what mattered most was the way the people reacted. I wanted the CBC to understand that it was wrong to come in and tell us what to say and do on our broadcast as if they knew better than we what was in our best interest. I was happy that the corporation finally understood that Grapes and I had a relationship with the show. The viewers put the CBC in their place.

  When we did the first Coach’s Corner a couple of weeks later, on Thanksgiving weekend, Grapes began with, “So what’s new? Anything happen over the summer?” I answered, “Quiet. Quiet on that front.” I was going to say, “I had it planned all along to sit down with a big turkey.” But when it came time, I wasn’t feeling it. I thought, “Screw it. Just thank people and get over yourself.” So that’s what I did.

  Don Meehan never asked for a fee. I’d broach the subject of an invoice and he’d say, “We’ll worry about that later.” Finally, he said, “Ron, we’re friends, forget it.” Meehan is a wine collector, so I went down to our wine fridge and pulled a bottle of Mouton-Rothschild 1993, a rare French first growth. I also got him flowers. Fresh flowers every month for a year.

  26

  FRENCH IMMERSION

  In the summer of 2003, I told a joke that was misinterpreted and that surfaced in the Globe and Mail.

  On July 18, Don and I had driven out to the Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts in Parry Sound, Ontario, on the shores of Georgian Bay. The event marked the opening of the new interactive museum, the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame, located in the building. Bobby’s trophies were on display—the Canada Cup, the Hart, the Lester B. Pearson, the Art Ross, the Norris, the Conn Smythe and the Calder—and that day they also had the Stanley Cup on display. It was an unbelievable celebration, with at least three thousand people there. They were listening to a steel drum band, watching Aboriginal dancing, kids were getting their faces painted, and all kinds of food was laid out. It was a giant carnival.

  At 1 p.m. I welcomed the crowd, and then Michael Burgess sang the Canadian national anthem in English and in French. I took the microphone again and mentioned that Grapes was in the crowd and would be speaking shortly. Don and I rarely spoke at the same occasions, kind of like Batman and Robin—they shine best when they are in the cave or fighting crime. I liked to tease Grapes, and so I thanked Michael Burgess for his beautiful rendition of the anthem, adding, “I know Don loves our anthem, but I am not sure he’s thrilled about the middle part,” meaning the French verse. “Remember, Don has nothing against French immersion. He figures we just don’t hold them under long enough.” I’d been telling that joke since 1996. Peter Mansbridge was always after me—”Ron, you can’t say that!” But Don’s joke was not about the French. It’s just that he sees Quebec standing up for itself and making political gains the way he wishes Ontario would.

  Several politicians got up to say a few words. Andy Mitchell, the secretary of state for rural development and for the federal economic development initiative for Northern Ontario, went on a little longer than most, and when he stepped down, I said, “Bobby, I wish your career had lasted as long as that speech.” The crowd laughed. Everybody was in a good mood.

  Finally, it was time for Grapes to come up. In 1974, when Don was just a rookie NHL coach with the Boston Bruins, the team had just received a new shipment of twenty-four hockey sticks. You can tell by the way Don dresses and by his big, ostentatious Lincolns that he is a bit of a neat freak. Everything has to be just so. He went into the dressing room, and he was surprised by this incredible mess of little wood chunks and sawdust everywhere. Someone had cut one-sixteenth off the top of each and every hockey stick. Don was really upset, and he started yelling, “Who’s the kook cutting the tops off the hockey sticks?”

  The team trainer was John “Frosty” Forristall, whose claim to fame under coach Harry Sinden was being the first to paint a stitch on Gerry Cheevers’ goalie mask. Forristall looked at Don and said, “Bobby Orr did it, Don.” And Don said, “Well, in that case, what an interesting thing to do!”

  I introduced Grapes. “Don has always been a big motivator. He told me about how, when he was a child, his father used to walk five miles to school with him every day. And of course, he had to—they were in the same class.”

  Grapes made his way to the stage, and the first thing he did was look up at the darkening sky and say, “Hmmm, the clouds are coming in—looks like a storm. Don’t worry about it. Bobby can stop them.” He turned to Bobby and smiled. “Bobby, hold the clouds back, will ya?” It was funny, and we all laughed. Grapes topped it off with an old but very good story he always tells about his first year in Boston, when Phil Esposito scored 61 goals and had 127 points.

  Phil was the king of garbage goals. God help the goalie who let out a rebound when Phil was in the slot. In fact, the great hockey historian Stan Fischler called him the highest-paid garbage collector in the United States.

  The next season, 1975–76, Phil was on a roll again. He had 16 points in 12 games. Phil loved playing with Bobby. They were magic together. But Phil didn’t fly through the air like Bobby did, so he felt he didn’t get the same credit. One day, Phil came to Don and said, “Grapes, it’s always Bobby Orr this and Bobby Orr that. Once in a while, how about moving Bobby out of the way for me?”

  A little while later, the team was on the road in Vancouver. Harry Sinden called Don and told him he had traded Phil to New York. Harry knew it would be tough news for Phil. He told Don, “Go get Bobby and take him with you when you tell Esposito.” So Bobby and Don knocked on Phil’s hotel room door, and Phil answered. He was wearing a pair of fancy silk pyjamas. Don and Bobby exchanged looks. Don sat down, and Bobby went over to look out the window. Espo looked at Don and said, “Grapes, if you tell me I’ve been traded to the Rangers, I’m gonna jump out the window!” Grapes yelled, “Bobby, get away from that window!”

  The crowd loved Don’s story, and then Bobby spoke. It was all very funny and moving and altogether a wonderful event because everybody had a great time. We had a ball that day. Everybody was killing themselves laughing. I felt good.

  Unbeknownst to me, the occasion was telecast live on CBC Newsworld, and Bill Houston from the Globe and Mail happened to be watching. He called Cari, and she called me while I was driving home. Houston wrote that I was “in hot water.” He also accused me of being a potty mouth. He said I had “been criticized in the past for using off-colour jokes on the air.” Houston’s column went on to say, “Jacques Demers, a Stanley Cup–winning coach who now works in broadcasting in Quebec and has appeared several times on Hockey Night, said he was offended. ‘I wasn’t there, but I don’t like what he said. I don’t know what’s the problem. I’m a French-Canadian, and I don’t know why he’s saying it.’” When Don questioned Jacques about it later, Jacques said, “Well, Don, I have to live here,” which I thought summed it up nicely.

  Houston’s columns continued. The next week, he intimated I was a racist and quoted Mario Brisebois, a writer for Le Journal de Montréal, who compared the French immersion comment to someone saying “an ethnic group was all right depending on how long they had been hanging from a tree.”

  I’ve always been quite concerned about Don’s and my beer-hall sensibility. Years earlier, I was speaking at a high school hockey tournament in Ontario, and a little kid came up to me and said, “Mr. MacLean, would you sign an autograph for my brother?” And the guidance counsellor who was showing me around asked him, “Did you want
an autograph from Mr. MacLean too?” And the kid said, “No, no. Grapes is the man. Grapes is right—get rid of the foreigners.” My world is filled with books on ethics, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the ethical aspects of what we do on Coach’s Corner.

  One person I’ve emailed from time to time is Anne Wortham, associate professor of sociology at Illinois State University. Anne wrote a piece called “Black Victimhood: A ‘Paradoxical Sequel’ to Civil Rights.” What stands out in that article for me is how she discerns between a real victim and a perceived victim. She says that to be a real victim, you have to be injured either by being deprived of your dignity or your ability to work or by a similar transgression. Anne’s paper said that people use victimhood to sashay politically. It does a great job of explaining how many people “cling to their group’s history of previous injustice and in a current dispute or dilemma use that history to silence people who disagree with them and shut off debate.” The stance of victimhood is a technique that can be used as an advantage.

  In the case of the French immersion joke, there was no injury. No one was being marginalized or being denied opportunity. Anne’s words resonated with me in regard to what Houston was writing.

  My joke was studied and discussed to death. The CBC distanced themselves from it and me. They said I was at the event because Bobby had asked me, and it had nothing to do with the network. Cari was furious. She stepped up and told the papers to back off. She asked everyone else to lighten up. It was just a joke, for Pete’s sake.

  In 2004, there was a move afoot from certain corners of the organization to get rid of Grapes. A Philadelphia Inquirer article by Tim Panaccio quoted an unnamed source as saying, “There is a small but strong contingent of senior CBC staffers who ‘want desperately’ to jettison Cherry.” It was no secret that, politically, Don wasn’t their cup of tea. These men and women of letters were led by Harold Redekopp, the executive vice-president of CBC Television in charge of English-language television programming. He’d come from radio. Don’s rough exterior turned Redekopp off. Harold was about to retire, and he took aim at CBC Television’s number one son.

  Don told me Harold Redekopp had said to him, “It will be my legacy to get rid of you.” He would leave his mark by dumping Don Cherry. Some guys would have replied, “Screw you! After all I’ve done for you.” But Don wouldn’t take the bait. He would not show his cards. He was too wily.

  Meanwhile, a lot of things happened that didn’t forward Grapes’s case. In January 2004, Grapes got into scalding water for insulting French guys and Europeans.

  Grapes had a code that said you could wear a visor, but if you did you couldn’t run around playing a physical game. He said that Ulf Samuelsson and Peter Forsberg, who both wore visors, ran around being reckless because the visors made them feel safe. He also noted that they were both born in Sweden. One time, when accused of calling Swedish hockey players chicken, Grapes said, “I have never called a Swede a chicken, because I have nothing against chickens.”

  When we launched into Coach’s Corner on January 24, we reviewed a fight between Calgary’s Jarome Iginla and Jordin Tootoo of the Nashville Predators. Don said, “You know what I think of Tootoo. I like him, but here is Iginla, a fifty-goal scorer fighting Tootoo, a six-goal scorer—Iginla’s the most valuable player in the league last year, I think, and he breaks his hand? The career is over. That’s the instigator rule. A teammate can’t step in. The instigator rule—the worst in the world!”

  Then we got into visors, and Grapes mentioned Tie Domi’s ten-year-old son, Max, who played with Don’s grandson, Del. “Max, he’s tougher than Tie. He’s Tie with hands! Tie never wore a mask. If he did, Max would have come in—’What are you doing, Dad? Turning into a suck?’ You know, it’s so politically correct. You can’t win saying they shouldn’t put on visors. I listen to the writers, I watch the TV guys, I hear the guy on the radio. They say, ‘Bless your little hearts.’ They are so worried about the guys having their visors on, what skin is it off their nose?”

  Don was rolling now. He started firing his index finger at the camera. “I said with helmets twenty years ago, we’re going to have more head injuries. We’re going to have more cuts—I predicted. And that’s it!”

  We looked at video of a few more guys getting roughed up, and Don started in on visors again. “And take a look at most of them—you check it—most of them have got visors on that do it. There’s no respect at all. And I remember, I played when the helmets were just coming in, and I remember a guy named Bobby Barlow [with the Rochester Americans in 1967–68]. He played ten years, he put on the helmet and I couldn’t believe it, he came to me and he said, ‘I’ve been hit in the head more, crashed more, since I put the helmet on.’”

  I tried to interject, but he swept me aside. “‘Bless your little hearts,’ all you sportswriters—you don’t understand. It will be made mandatory, so you can go to bed at night and write ‘those stupid hockey players.’ But I’m going to tell you something—most of the guys that wear them are European or French guys.”

  I knew right away what Don said was not good. I also knew I had to stop him from airing further thoughts on French and European players. I searched for something to say to neutralize the situation. This was not going to be an easy fix.

  I tried rephrasing his point. “Take a look at Tootoo and Iginla. You might have been right at one point because of the way it was implemented in European hockey first, but now everybody—40 per cent of the NHL’s wearing a mask.”

  Don hammered home his original point. “Absolutely, and most of the guys—the tough guys like Tie Domi—cannot wear them. They will make it mandatory. There is no doubt about it. And it’s a sad thing. We’ve gone from helmets to—well, it’s a sad thing …”

  Fearing he was headed back for trouble again, I tried to interrupt, but he started jabbing me in the lapel, shouting over me.

  “I predicted! Did I not predict?”

  “Yes!” I agreed, and sat on the edge of my seat, ready to jump in while he finished his point.

  “Concussions and cuts! And they’re there. The proof is in the pudding. The do-gooders, the whiners and the ones on TV and the writers who don’t understand, you’ve won again!”

  I said, “All right. Well, I’ll ask you, what should they do with major penalties?”

  Don shouted, “Give him a major penalty! A guy cuts a guy, give him a major. Never mind this four minutes. Get him out of the game!”

  I said, “All right. All in favour of visors say ‘aye.’ I feel so much better that you’re going to let us have it. On the Coach’s Corner on Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. We can all sleep tonight.”

  But not everyone did.

  The phones lit up, and Harold Redekopp sprang into action. He issued a statement saying that Grapes “unacceptably stepped beyond [his] role by expressing an inappropriate and reprehensible personal opinion.”

  All this wasn’t making what Don had said any easier to ignore. It caught the attention of the Official Languages Commissioner, Dyane Adam. She announced she was going to launch a formal investigation into what Don had said in case he had breached the Official Languages Act.

  Redekopp released a statement. “CBC Television categorically rejects and denounces the personal opinions Mr. Cherry expressed during the segment.” Redekopp and CBC president Robert Rabinovitch put Coach’s Corner on a seven-second delay, which meant the guys in the production truck had a chance to hear what we said seven seconds before it went over the air. If they didn’t like it, they could cut it out.

  Don’s job was in serious jeopardy. His contract was up at the end of the year, and I was worried the visor remark might be the excuse they’d use not to renew it. Then Nancy Lee decided not to assign Don to the World Cup of Hockey that August. They hired Brian Burke instead.

  There was tension all around. I remember going into the Air Canada Lounge in Montreal. The women working at the counter were hot at Grapes. They asked me, “How can you work with that h
orse’s ass?”

  I took up Don’s cause with our bosses. I wrote a letter to Nancy and said, “Do you think that Don pointing out that Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic and Luc Robitaille and Jarome Iginla and all these guys are wearing visors is in any way hurting their careers? Does that make them victims? Are they going to be paid less in their next contract because Don Cherry has said this?” In my mind, French and European players might have been annoyed by what Grapes said, but their careers were not impacted. I felt it was like Anne Wortham’s idea of a completely false sense of victimhood. The only people I heard complaining were reporters, a couple of politicians and Dr. Emile Therien, president of the Canada Safety Council. He was a driving force behind the requirement that junior and minor hockey players wear visors. Interestingly, his son Chris played for the Philadelphia Flyers, and Don always thought it was a little bit of poetic justice that Chris played without any face protection.

  The Globe and Mail ran an article by Gayle MacDonald at the end of April with the headline “The Puck Stops Here for Grapes.” It started out with a quote. “‘The love-hate relationship between the CBC and Don Cherry is so strained that the two sides are preparing to sever their 23-year relationship at the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs,’ said a long-time friend of Mr. Cherry, who asked not to be named. ‘Harold [Redekopp, executive vice-president of CBC TV] and Bob [Rabinovitch, CBC president] have the biggest issues with Don,’ said the source. ‘And the ironic thing is those two guys are leaving the company’ … Mr. Cherry says he hopes he and Mr. MacLean don’t part ways. ‘Although I sometimes don’t understand him, and I don’t like his left-wing thinking and he’s a referee … I still have fun with him doing Coach’s Corner, and I can’t imagine being on television without him. Oh God, I’ve never said that before. He’s going to think I’m going nuts.’”

  On Monday, June 7, we covered game seven of the Stanley Cup final between the Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning. At the end of the game, in which the Lightning won the Cup, Don and I sat down for our traditional beer. He was unusually quiet. I could tell he was concerned about not coming back. He was thinking he might have just done his last Coach’s Corner.