This past week, deputy Conservative leader Peter MacKay admitted to the world that he had attempted to engage in a bit of political flirtation with infamous CBC hockey commentator Don Cherry. MacKay’s attempts to land the cantankerous septuagenarian as a candidate for the newly-united party of the Canadian Right may ultimately prove futile, though, given that Cherry himself has dismissed the possibility of his own entry into electoral politics: “Too late . . . I don’t think I could take a pay cut, either.” Seven Oaks’ Charles Demers urges old Grapes to reconsider.

Dear Mr. Cherry:

In the interests of being up-front, I should open by saying that I am a product of a household largely untouched by your iconic stature. You are of a breed of Canadian hero not unlike our first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald; English people seem enamoured with you, but my Francophone father failed to instil in me a proper appreciation. In addition to our disconnect in the world of sports, I’m afraid we also have very little in common in the world of gastronomy; you’re a Quizno’s kind of guy, while I must profess to possessing a body-type more reminiscent of a young Jared Fogle (of Subway diet fame). It seems our only point of commonality is a history with French immersion; I’m an alumnus of the program and, according to your dear friend Ron MacLean, you’ve got nothing against it. You just think that “they don't hold them down long enough.” Charming. I’m writing to you for help, Mr. Cherry.

There was once a time, Don, when it was great to be a leftist in Canada. There was a time when the most prominent figure on the Right in this country delineated the two greatest threats, historically, to the “unborn”: abortion doctors and the dinosaurs with whom we apparently co-existed. It was a time when the “respectable” Right and the “legitimate” press threw their weight — albeit for, like, two weeks — behind a buzz-cut caveman who rode sea-doos and cited the literal truth of every word in the Bible (ostensibly including “Placed here by the Gideons”). Lest you think that this was simply a leadership issue, that the grassroots weren’t affected, remember that the candidates under him talked about the “Asian invasion” on the West Coast. Ah, the wonder years. Let’s call them the “Stockwell days.”

During the Stockwell days, Grapes, there was no mistaking the real face of the Right in Canada: a bunch of racist, anti-immigrant, Francophobic, jingoistic, anti-woman, flat tax cowpoke unelectable by any self-respecting populous. We were all so disoriented that the wincing, self-effacing faux-progressivism of a desperate Joe Clark had us all surprised when, in the middle of a debate, he reminded us that he was proud of NAFTA. The suit-and-tie, establishment conservatism of Mulroney and Clark had seemingly been eschewed for the celebratory-bullet-holes-in-the-ceiling crowd.

For a fleeting moment, I had hope that the new regime of Stephen Harper might yield the same results. There was his squinting, halting delivery of a pigeon French that sounded as though he was resting a maple-coated turd in the back of his throat. There was his congratulatory letter to a First Nations’ leader on the anniversary of Indian independence, painfully recalling General Custer’s massacre at Jalianwala Bagh. Maybe, I thought, Harper’s obscurant, sun-revolves-around-the-earth style would shine through with as much painful fluorescence as Stockwell’s.

No such luck. Treating the man with kid gloves, the mainstream press seems hell-bent on breaking up the Liberals’ one-party state by treating Harper like a legitimate statesman.

That’s where you come in, Don. I feel like Peter MacKay has given us all a second chance to return to the Stockwell days by courting you as a candidate. With the absurdity of your wardrobe outshone only by the absurdity of your retrograde, toxic politics, you’re certain to remind the Canadian people just how dangerous the newly-packaged Conservative Party of Canada really is.

In many ways, I wouldn’t have thought MacKay to be this sporting. Here his party is “reaching out to Québec,” making specific overtures towards the other solitude, speaking Frankly on TV. I still remember the excitement with which the Radio-Canada reporters zeroed in on the handful of frogs at the otherwise WASP-ridden Conservative leadership convention after Harper said a few tame but sympathetic words in French. It sounded like the new party wanted to be mostly Coke, but with at least a shot of Pepsi.

And then came MacKay’s overture, asking you — a man who has made news this past year almost exclusively through your gratuitous and unseemly Québec-bashing — to be a candidate. Could a Conservative “Helmets are for Faggots” election plank be far behind? With your history with the Boston Bruins, you’re used to being part of a team aimed at dashing the hopes of the Québecois — aren’t the Conservatives the next logical leap to make?

While other rightists hide their anti-Iraqi bloodlust behind a thin film of nuance and big words about fledgling democracy, you boldly “tell it like it is,” Don. And when it comes to Europeans, we don’t want their sissy welfare states any more than we want their sissy style of hockey.

In short, Don Cherry, I’m asking you to continue doing what you do best: keep articulating your ape-like, backward-looking “Canadiana” with pompous, ignorant, and arrogant belligerence. Keep doing it on the taxpayer’s dime, and to a national audience. On the Left and on the Right, Don, we need you to run.

Semi-sincerely,

Charles Demers

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