Don Cherry became the target of Canada's left a year ago when he blasted the Prime Minister on the air for refusing to support the US going to war in Iraq.
This man, while an average hockey player, has become one of the biggest breaths of fresh air in the North American media.
I love this country so much but its become unbearable and I'm looking forward to leaving in a couple of years.
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OTTAWA -- The furor over anti-French remarks made by hockey sports commentator Don Cherry has skated onto Parliament Hill. Official Languages Commissioner Dyan Adam said her probe into Cherry's comments about francophones will be a "priority" while an angry senator demanded an apology in the red chamber.
At issue are comments made on Hockey Night In Canada's Coach's Corner Jan. 24, when Cherry derided calls for mandatory use of protective visors by NHL players following a spate of eye injuries. Only "Europeans and French guys" routinely wear the visors, said the unrepentantly frank commentator known as Grapes.
Yesterday, Adam called the remarks a "major issue" that were creating national turmoil. Her mandate is to ensure Official Languages Act provisions are upheld at all public institutions, including the CBC.
"In this case, what we are hearing from the complainants is that the remarks in question don't help in the respect of those communities and that they actually stigmatize them," she said.
Liberal Senator Jean-Paul Gauthier agreed Cherry must be sanctioned for "disparaging" remarks that crossed the line.
"You and I pay our taxes to support the public network. The mandate of the CBC is to promote national unity, not disunity," he said.
He urged the Senate to write CBC president Robert Rabinovitch to tell Cherry to "shut up."
"This is madness," said Conservative Jim Abbott, adding the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council shouldn't be "censoring" free speech.
"Clearly the bureaucrats have gone crazy," he said. "They've taken lessons from the official language police in Quebec."
Former NHL coach Jacques Demers wrote in his weekly column in Le Journal de Montreal that Cherry should apologize or be fired for his "racist" comments.
Cherry wouldn't discuss his latest dip in hot water as he celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said with a chuckle on all-sports radio station The Fan 590. "In a couple of weeks I'll talk about it. But I've raised enough eyebrows."