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There is no career in all of Canadian sports history, and there will never be another one as successful, as entertaining, as continuously animated and enthusiastic as Don Cherry’s. And this is how it ends. No testimonial dinner. No gathering of hockey heroes, old and young, to toast and roast the master communicator of the game. No TV specials to celebrate the greatest television star that purely Canadian TV has produced. He is, you know.

Instead, without so much as time to take a breath, Sportsnet gives him the boot in an (ungrammatical) three-sentence press release that should be put in a museum for its rare blend of perfect corporate sanctimony and utter cravenness. He deserved — he deserves so much better and you crowd should be ashamed of yourselves for treating Canadian hockey’s No. 1 statesman the way you have.

Sportsnet press release … should be put in a museum for its rare blend of perfect corporate sanctimony and utter cravenness

No need to listen to me on Don Cherry, however. Not when one of the game’s handful of absolute legends has had his say on this tawdry episode.

How fine it is, so very fine, to read of one of the gentleman heroes of the Canadian game, Bobby Orr, being so clear and straight and direct when talking of his one-time coach and forever-friend, Mr. Cherry. How fine to see a man standing up against the supercilious sneering and precious denunciations of an 85-year-old Canadian patriot, and declaring without qualification, that he — Mr. Cherry — is NOT a bigot, NOT a racist — the witchcraft accusations of our time — and to those who know him and have had the gift of his acquaintance, the actual opposite and antithesis of both of these scandalous libels.

Bobby Orr, who knows Don Cherry like no one else knows him, put the cap on the moment with this slap shot of a statement: “What they’ve done to him … is disgraceful. It really is.” Good on you, Bobby Orr. Disgraceful it was, and it is so good in these days of timorous evasiveness and sly circumlocutions that you found the right word and had no hesitation in using it. Not to mention that standing up for your buddy and mentor displays such real character, the character of standing by a friend in a hour of fury when the know-it-alls are piling on him.