WATERLOO—The Canadian forces’ best weapon may be Don Cherry and the particular brand of combat patriotism that he pushes on Hockey Night in Canada, according to a new study.

Cherry is the common link among hockey, soldiers and a bolder, more aggressive strain of Canadian identity — an identity that may leave some women and multicultural communities cold, according to the study by University of Western Ontario academics John Nater and Robert Maciel.

Cherry speaks of soldiers almost as much as he talks about hockey in his Coach’s Corner segments, according to Nater and Maciel’s analysis.

“For Cherry, Canadian nationalism rests on an unquestioning support for the military, support of traditional institutions and (a) view of hockey that highlights the physical nature of the game,” they write in their study.

“This guy has a huge viewing public and, even if it’s only a small segment of society that actually takes what he says to heart, it’s a significant audience that he reaches with this particular view of Canadian nationalism, which doesn’t take into account multicultural society (or) women,” said Nater, who provided an advance copy of his paper to the Star.

The study is to be released Tuesday, during the annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, where some of the country’s leading political thinkers are also grappling with the fallout of the recent federal election.

Some political scientists fear the results of the election may be evidence that voters are more tuned in to Cherry’s Canada than they are to Parliament — and that the newly elected Conservative majority could represent a setback in fixing what’s wrong with politics in Ottawa.

“The public clearly was fine in thinking that contempt was clearly not a big deal,” said David Docherty, a Wilfrid Laurier University political scientist, in reference to the opposition vote that declared the Conservatives guilty of contempt of Parliament, which resulted in the collapse of the last Parliament.

“I think the public is self-interested, and they’re more concerned with a litre of gas not going above $1.40 than they are about a democratic Parliament.”

Peter Russell, one of Canada’s leading constitutional scholars, appeared in a YouTube video in the late stages of the election campaign, saying he feared that a Conservative majority would represent a reward for ill-treatment of Parliament.

After a panel discussion Monday with Docherty, Russell said he was worried that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, by winning, had persuaded Canadians that all the talk of Parliament’s dysfunction was simply “bickering.”

“Now that is dangerous,” Russell said. “We used to call it parliamentary debate.” The Liberals in particular had staked a good deal of their campaign on Harper’s alleged abuses of democracy, but the party was reduced to 34 seats and leader Michael Ignatieff, chief spokesperson for that democracy pitch, lost his seat.

A Canadian public that sees political debate the same way it views hockey brawls is unlikely to want to fix political problems, or even pay attention to Parliament and the subtleties of federal politics, some of the conference attendees fear.

Nater and Maciel, doctoral candidates at UWO, became interested in Cherry’s military boosterism a couple of years ago. That was before he became even more active in politics, appearing for instance at last fall’s swearing-in ceremony for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, where he mocked left-leaning “pinkos.”

After meticulously transcribing Cherry’s remarks on Coach’s Corner for the entirety of the 2009-10 regular season, Nater and Maciel found a remarkable number of references to the military.

“Cherry uses the word ‘troops’ a total of 12 times during the season. This is in addition to his use of the word ‘soldiers’ six times and ‘battle’ four times. Cherry also mentions ‘war’ four times during this season,” says the study.

Cherry also praises hockey players and soldiers alike as “good boys” and even uses the word “player” interchangeably when it comes to team members and Canadian Forces personnel, according to the study.

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The study’s authors wonder whether Cherry’s view is less a bold new Canadianism than it is an older one — a relic of “old-world British nationalism” with emphasis on fighting men and sports.

Nater says that it is possible to draw a connection between hockey, soldiers and a “rough-and-tumble” kind of politics that favours a “take-no-prisoners” approach. Harper’s past two minority governments were characterized by precisely this tough approach, especially in attacks on alleged “weaker” opponents.

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