No Order of Canada for Cherry? That’s the pits, sour grapes Conservatives insist

Tout le monde MAGA Alberta, apparently anxious to quit Canada as quickly as possible and maybe even join the gong show south of the 49th Parallel, is all of a sudden, speaking of gongs, in a swivet because Don Cherry doesn’t have an Order of Canada!

Go figure! Is it just me, or is this kinda weird?

Whatever it is, surely this must be the dumbest political story in Alberta in at least a decade, and that’s saying quite a lot. 

This is an Alberta story because it’s got plenty of Alberta elements. The petition launched by the federal Conservative Party demanding that Canada’s most scintillating civilian gong be given to Mr. Cherry, an obnoxious hockey talking head in his heyday, has been signed by the Honourable Member for Battle River-Crowfoot, better known as Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Former journalist Andrew Lawton, now the Conservative MP for the Ontario riding of Elgin-St. Thomas-London South, actually made the nomination – as any Canadian citizen may do – notwithstanding the fact the online petition page found on the Conservative Party’s website pretends that everyone who signs the form is doing the nominating.

They’re not. But for sure, anyone who leaves their email address will soon get some fund-raising spam from Mr. Poilievre. 

Meanwhile, Alberta’s most prominent enabler of separatism, Premier Danielle “I’m-Clearly-Fighting-for-Canada” Smith, naturally enthusiastically joined the effort to elevate Mr. Cherry, who is also inexplicably known as Grapes.* “Don Cherry is a Canadian icon, a hockey legend and is loved by Albertans,” she said, exaggerating shamelessly. 

“He’s not just one of the greats, his word and opinion about our national sport is still treated as hockey gospel by millions of Canadians,” she added, suggesting that anything less than a full Companion of the Order of Canada would be, well, the pits. 

A Calgary Postmedia columnist, meanwhile, grumbled that “for far too many years, Don Cherry has been snubbed by the establishment types in this country, the look down their noses at the rest of us elites.” This sentence could have been rendered a trifle less confusing with the use of a smattering of hyphens, but if you read it over enough times you’ll get what Rick Bell had in mind. 

“If you are against such recognition, you can call yourself a Canadian patriot, but you’re really just a leftist chauvinist,” moaned hockey columnist David Staples on social media, sounding like he’d really, really rather be commentating about politics. “If Canada can’t honour Don Cherry, what good is this country?” 

Indeed. What good is Canada without sour old Grapes wearing the Order of Canada lapel pin in one of his flamboyant sports jackets? (One senses we’re about to have a What-Have-the-Romans-Ever-Done-for-Us moment here. Rather than remaking the obvious points, maybe I’ll just leave it there since the answer to that kind of hyperbolic foolishness is undoubtedly obvious to all.)

Prompted by this kind of cheerleading, as any visit to social media will show, Wild Rose MAGA has definitely gotten its collective knickers into a wedgie about this – which has a certain kind of poetically symbolic consistency, one supposes, seeing as this is also pretty much the silliest wedge issue the Conservatives have ever tried.

These are the same good people, remember, who just weeks ago were hyperventilating about Mark Carney’s Order of Canada lapel pin, thinking aloud that it might be some kind of evidence the prime minister was tied to the Bavarian Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, or at least the Tofield Lodge of Elks. And that was before he showed up in person at a World Economic Forum meeting of all places and – Heaven forfend! – gave a speech. 

Well, at least now they know. 

A lot of commentators on social media – along with Mr. Poilievre’s strategic brain trust, apparently – don’t seem to fully understand that the Governor General of Canada gets to make the call on who joins the Order, based on the recommendations of a non-partisan and independent advisory council. There’s no point asking the prime minister about this. He has nothing to do with it. 

The Prime Minister’s Office quietly noted the process, but otherwise wisely had nothing to say about the matter. 

Appointments are supposed to honour individual people “who make extraordinary contributions to the nation.” Whether calling people who believe in climate change “cuckaloos” amounts to a contribution to the nation, I guess, is a matter of perspective. 

Mr. Cherry’s hockey commentary has wandered far enough off the ice enough times for him to be fairly categorized as a right-wing weirdo. He has engaged in music criticism, for example, calling anyone who disagreed with his opinions about the national anthem a left-wing weirdo. 

He supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a bad call, as it turned out. He campaigned for the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, of which the same thing can now be said. And he famously accused immigrants to Canada of not wearing poppies before Remembrance Day, an alleged phenomenon for which there was not a shred of evidence. He refused to apologize. That last one got him fired by Sportsnet in 2019. 

November was months ago, but the photo of Mr. Cherry on the party web page featuring Mr. Lawton’s petition shows him wearing a prominently displayed poppy. Under the circumstances, this can be taken as a not-very subtle dog-whistle. 

At this late hour, even some Conservatives from outside Alberta seem to be developing sensible doubts about the wisdom of this particular wedge. 

Considering Mr. Cherry’s “unacceptable remarks toward the Quebec nation and francophones,” observed Quebec Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus coolly, giving Grapes the gong would be “a bad idea.” 

Don’t expect that to keep CPC’s entire Alberta Caucus from jumping on the Cherry train, though.

*The most obvious explanation is that there is some confusion in sports circles between grapes and cherries. The difference? It’s the pits. Raisins, it is said here, would have been funnier and more age appropriate.