Christopher Dummitt: Don Cherry snub exposes Order of Canada's partisan, elitist bias |
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Christopher Dummitt: Don Cherry snub exposes Order of Canada's partisan, elitist bias
The hypocrisy of those who won’t accept him is obvious
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If membership in the Order of Canada were offered to Canadians who significantly shaped our national culture, Don Cherry would have received it long ago. But at aged 92, Don Cherry is still waiting.
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Love him or hate him — and there are plenty in both camps — Cherry was a fixture in the life of the nation for decades. He wasn’t just a hockey coach and commentator with extravagant suits and loudly voiced opinions; he was also a businessman and philanthropist, a supporter of hockey at all levels and an enthusiast for Canada’s military and its history.
Christopher Dummitt: Don Cherry snub exposes Order of Canada's partisan, elitist bias Back to video
Cherry viewed conversation as something like a barroom brawl. There was “common sense,” which — lucky for him — he believed he possessed in abundance, and then there was what everyone else thought. There was his way, and there was the wrong way. We all know people like Don Cherry; they frustrate and delight in equal measure.
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And that is precisely the problem. Order of Canada membership is supposed to be based on “outstanding contributions to a particular community, region or field of activity,” according to the nomination booklet. But in practice it operates more like an upper-middle-class rotary club in a small town, where you have to pass the bland test. Do you offend anyone enough for them to nix your application?
And Cherry, of course, offends. That’s his whole persona: to be opinionated, to take a firm stand on what matters in hockey and in the nation writ large. There is no place in the Order of Canada for people like him, but there should be.
Of course, the hypocrisy of those who won’t accept Cherry is obvious. You are allowed to have firm opinions and to divide people; it just helps if you divide and frustrate in the right way.
The Order of Canada granted membership to Henry Morgentaler, a doctor known for his role in forcing the end of legal restrictions on abortions in Canada, back in 2008, and this was, for many, a deeply divisive appointment, even within pre–Justin Trudeau Liberal circles.
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Then there are supporters of Quebec separatism, whom the Order apparently does not deem too divisive. There’s Alice Parizeau, the Polish-Canadian writer who was a prominent figure in separatist literary circles in the province and who was married to Jacques Parizeau, the premier who nearly took Quebec out of Canada in 1995 and who, when the referendum fell short, blamed the loss on “money and the ethnic vote.”
If supporting the break-up of Canada isn’t divisive, what else would count?
More recently, a number of Indigenous rights activists have been invited into the Order. There is Alanis Obomsawin, the Abenaki filmmaker who rejects the idea that films should be unbiased and instead offers her own strongly opinionated interpretations of contemporary Canadian politics and history. Her critiques of Canada are as one-sided and lacking in objectivity as any Don Cherry rant. But the difference is that she is saying the kinds of guilt-inducing things that our elite class now feels are both acceptable and even necessary.
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Or there is Cindy Blackstock, the Indigenous rights activist who took on Canada’s child welfare policies for Indigenous children by launching a human rights complaint and law suit against the federal government. There might be a great deal to celebrate in Blackstock’s campaign, but there is also much that, if examined carefully, might make Canadians uneasy. At the basis of her critique of child welfare policy is the idea that Indigenous children should be adopted within Indigenous communities. This is often framed as attention to the cultural needs of children. But what she and others are effectively demanding is a segregationist child welfare model: Indigenous children raised only by Indigenous parents.
Can you imagine if Don Cherry had ever made a comparable claim on Hockey Night in Canada, suggesting, for example, that white children should only be adopted by white parents? Because to do otherwise would lead to cultural erasure? It would make any offside comments about “you people” needing to wear more poppies (for which he was fired in 2019) seem like a mild profanity.
But the kinds of claims made by Blackstock, Obomsawin and others are the accepted forms of divisiveness.
What is most striking about who gets into the Order of Canada is who is left out. Whether Cherry gets in or not will not change this.
You will not find among its members a nurse inducted simply for being a nurse. The same goes for factory workers, farmers or hairdressers. You will not find a police officer or a soldier who did not become political or rise through the ranks. To be elevated to membership in the Order, these individuals must escape their working-class status. They must move into some kind of leadership role — become upper-middle-class, or at least culturally adjacent, like many social justice advocates.
The Order is elitist, of course, but it is no real meritocracy. It is a class-based private members’ club for those who think alike and who went to the right schools.
Conservative MP Andrew Lawton is doing a good thing by nominating Cherry and exposing the cultural rot at the heart of this institution. He is forcing a reckoning over who is considered controversial and who is not.
No doubt the Order’s nomination committee is hoping the controversy will pass. That way, it can return to rewarding the next eminent businesswoman or scientist who spends her spare time advocating for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal public service.
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