What are people so upset about?
By Eric Wilkins, Contributor
“I was talking to a veteran, I said, I’m not going to run the poppy thing anymore because what’s the sense? I live in Mississauga. Nobody wearsâvery few people wearâa poppy. Downtown Toronto? Forget it. Downtown Toronto, nobody wears a poppy [âŚ] Wait a minute. How about running it for the people who buy them? […] You people loveâthey come here, whatever it is, you love our way of life; you love our milk and honey. The least you could pay [is] a couple of bucks for a poppy or something like that [âŚ] These guys pay for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys pay the biggest price.”
Itâs a now-infamous speech from the Hockey Night in Canada segment âCoachâs Corner,â but why? A number of folks will bristle at the mention of Cherry and immediately climb aboard the I-canât-believe-he-said-that train; upon further questioning, however, they wonât really have a concrete answer for what exactly Cherry said that was so offensive. âHe was insulting to immigrants!â âHe used xenophobic terminology!â âHe was racist!â And if pressed further, said folks tend to try and call you a racist simply for questioning on the very âobviousâ issue.
Itâs an odd sort of desperation often seen in the world today. No one ever wants to appear ill-informed, so theyâll latch on to whatever left- or right-side they usually do and defend itâŚeven before doing any research. Itâs not enough to vaguely know about something. Thereâs nothing from the five wâs (who, where, what, when, why) that can be missed if you want to have an opinion on it. But I digress.
Nowhere in his speech does he say immigrants. Nowhere in his speech does he say immigrants are evil and donât care about Remembrance Day. Nowhere in his speech does he say the Canadian military is completely white. Nowhere in his speech does he say diversity is bad. Nowhere in his speech does he say soldiers of ethnic backgrounds other than the many varieties of white (British, American, Scandinavian, etc.) didnât also make sacrifices to defeat the Axis powers.
In a handful of post-speech comments, heâs mentioned how he would have liked to have said âeverybodyâ instead of âyou people.â Now, Iâm no Don Cherry fan, but if no oneâs noticed, he doesnât particularly care whether or not he names a specific people or ethnic group⌠If he meant and wanted to say âimmigrantsâ I think he would have said it. Additionally, should it not be enough that he clarified he should have said âeverybodyâ? Doesnât his revision show that people misunderstood the words of an 85-year-old man?
Everyone jumps to the conclusion that heâs making a commentary about immigrants when, if anything, his commentary is about small-town communities and large cities (i.e., itâs hard for immigrants to understand local customs when there arenât many friendly helping hands to show the way; smaller communities are better suited for this). Does everyone really believe that Cherry thinks Toronto and Mississauga are completely immigrants? You can even go back in his speech and follow the parallels that the âyou peopleâ is really âeverybodyâ all along since he says, âDowntown Toronto, nobody wears a poppy.â
He didnât say none of âyou peopleâ wear a poppy. He didnât say âonly good Canadian kids wear poppies in Downtown Toronto.â He said nobody. So, either a section of the public believes Cherry thinks the majority of Torontoâs 2.9 million citizens are immigrants, or that same section of the public hyper-focused on the octogenarianâs one slightly misspoken phraseâa phrase that loses the negative connotation when you put it in the context of the speech.
Calling in to Newstalk 1010 Radio, Cherry further cleared the air about what he was saying: âI still feel that everybody in this country that likes our way of life… these beautiful people gave their lives in their 20s and in their teens… they should wear a poppy. And if thatâs offensive then there’s nothing I can do about it. Thatâs the way I feel. And Iâm not changing. I don’t regret a thing.â
No immigrant mention. No rant about âsoftâ Europeans. No cry to kill all those who donât wear poppies. Just a man saying that if you like the liberties and freedoms offered to you as a Canadian, you should be thankful and respectful to those fallen shoulders upon which youâre standing.
Itâs disappointing how a man spilling his two cents on the value of wearing a poppy has been twisted by the alt-left into a racist rant. The hypocrisy of a nation crucifying a man for one phrase that didnât even mean what they thought it meant, while electing a Caucasian male in blackface to run our country is almost too rich to believe.
