Even when walking silently, Don Cherry creates a stir.

It’s 9 a.m. on a luminous Thursday when he ambles into CBC headquarters, passing through the John Street glass entrance like a medieval king in a purple suit and starched tone-on-tone white shirt.

In his wake, passersby slow to gawk and point the way mortals do when in the sudden presence of royalty. Cherry matches his admirers wave for wave, smile for smile, thumbs-up for thumbs-up, returning each exuberant “Don!” with a reflexive, “How you doing?”

It’s like this everywhere he goes.

“Honey!” shouts a middle-aged barista, as we drift into a coffee shop inside the stately atrium. “You look great! You never change!”

“How you doing?” he responds.

A woman in line pivots and gives Cherry a captivated once-over, like a tourist in Paris near the Eiffel Tower. Another young man asks him to pose for a picture, which is snapped with a trembling hand.

By the time Cherry pays for his large Colombian Supremo, which he triple-cups instead of using a cardboard sleeve, he has signed two autographs, mugged for another camera and given his phone number to an ashen stranger who unburdens himself with a tale of woe about his son not getting drafted.

It’s like this all the time.

Love him or hate him — after all these years, there is still no middle ground — Cherry occupies a rarefied place in the pantheon of Canadian celebrity. The Stanley Cup Final begins this week and, once again, he will be cast into the national spotlight. He will hurl thunderbolts from the bully pulpit known as Coach’s Corner, polarizing an audience that’s expected to break records as the Vancouver Canucks vie to become the first Canadian team since 1993 to win hockey’s ultimate prize.

Cherry made his debut in 1980. Roughly 1,750 segments, 31 years and a million public storms later, the titular corner now extends across Canada. But one thing that has not changed is the coach’s mistrust of the industry he conquered and the fame he refuses to embrace.

“Television is a jungle,” says Cherry, now 77. “I thought hockey was a tough business. But this is a tough business. You know why? I’m going to say it for the first time: Everybody hopes you fail.”

This belief has fuelled Cherry, powering him across the jagged patches, over the criticisms and early moments of self-doubt. But while ascending to the top with a sword — “You have to be tougher than the next guy” — Cherry now finds himself trapped in time, pulled toward his hardscrabble past, pushed away from the fame he chased with such ferocity.

“Once you start thinking that you’re a big star and stuff like that, then you lose something,” he says. “I honest to God still think of myself as a 32-year-old hockey player who worked on construction in the summer. That’s the way I think.”

It’s also the way he lives.

Cherry’s vehicles — two 1983 Lincoln Continentals (one white, one black) and a 1991 Ford F150 Flare Side truck — are older than many NHL players. He lives on an unremarkable street in Mississauga, in a house so modest it would give Justin Bieber a panic attack. The tattered leather recliner upon which he perches inside his basement “refuge” was purchased in 1964.

“I haven’t seen him change one iota,” says daughter Cindy. “Sometimes people mellow with age, but that doesn’t apply to Don Cherry.”

“He’s the most consistent man I know,” says hockey legend and longtime friend Bobby Orr.

“There is no act,” says Brian Williams, Cherry’s pal and on-air partner in Grapeline, the syndicated radio show they’ve co-hosted for 28 years. “He is exactly the same in person as he is on the air.”

But who is that person? It’s a question Cherry himself struggles to answer. It’s a question that also triggers candid reflection.

“I wouldn’t recommend the way I live to anybody,” he says. “It’s a hard way to live, a real hard way to live. It’s no fun for the people around you.”

At first, this sounds patently absurd. Then I remember something that happened 20 minutes earlier. Two men sat down at a table beside us and started talking loudly. Since the coffee shop was far from capacity, Cherry viewed their seating preference as an act of hostility or, at the very least, rudeness.

Without warning, he jumped out of his seat, unleashed a haze of mumbled profanities and led me to another table. Rose, his first wife who passed away in 1997, refused to go to the movies with her husband, fearing he’d end up scrapping with another patron. Luba, the woman Cherry married in 1999, also dislikes most aspects of public life.

“I think it’s hard on her,” says Cherry, referring to his 58-year-old wife, who declined to be interviewed. “She comes from a quiet family. She went to work and come home. Now all of a sudden the phone is ringing, faxes are coming, I’m getting ripped in the paper and on TV. It really bothers her. She doesn’t accept it good. I try to tell her, ‘Hey, that’s just the way it is.’ But she’s just like Rose.”

In the mournful period between Rose and Luba, it was Cherry who was forced to accept something: He was lost.

“When you’re with someone for 43 years and then all of a sudden you’re alone . . . ” he says, the words sputtering to a halt. “I was drifting through life. I was a single guy looking out the window. I was absolutely helpless.”

More often than not, meals came from a can. He would eat hovering over the kitchen sink. As the Internet was reaching critical mass, connecting people and creating communities, Cherry was increasingly isolated.

He has, by design, few friends in hockey. “I won’t criticize them if they are my friends. No job is worth criticizing a friend. So I don’t talk to anybody and nobody talks to me.”

He does not know “how to do email.” He does not upload photos or search on Google or travel with an iPad. The man who ranked seventh in CBC’s The Greatest Canadian series, ahead of Alexander Graham Bell, does not even own a cellphone.

Of course, on a subconscious level, this might be wise.

Cherry operates without what pop psychologists sometimes call “a mouth-brain filter.” He says what he thinks, as he’s thinking it, consequences be damned. Predictably, this has drawn rebukes from politicians, hockey execs and cultural pundits who see Cherry as a bête noire in suits that would baffle the colour scientists at Crayola.

His overlords inside the CBC, meanwhile, even experimented with a seven-second delay in 2004, essentially treating their biggest star like a sloshed Hollywood starlet at a live awards telecast.

“They really did not like me,” says Cherry, recalling management reaction in those early days. “But I think I became so popular they had no choice.”

His relationship with the public broadcaster used to feel like hand-to-hand combat. Those days are gone. The underlying threat of a nuclear option — getting rid of Grapes — gave way to a kind of Cold War, which has turned into détente.

“I don’t think Don has achieved what he’s achieved by being filtered,” says Trevor Pilling, who became the show’s executive producer last summer. “He’s employed by Hockey Night in Canada to provide his opinions and not have it watered down by us.”

Those opinions have, with greater frequency, strayed beyond the ice.

“I think the hockey is a bit of a loss leader or a red herring in all of this,” says Ron MacLean, Cherry’s foil and sparring partner on Coach’s Corner. “I think what he really is is a bit of an essayist who is trying to combine a little bit of journalism, a little bit of philosophy and theology.”

Cherry is a voracious reader. He’s currently turning the pages of Letters From T.E. Lawrence — “I’m kind of infatuated with him . . . you know, Lawrence of Arabia” — and has amassed a small library of early edition books about historical figures like Sir Francis Drake, Lord Nelson and Arthur Wellesley.

If there is a theme, if there are lessons to be gleaned from the writings of Horatio Alger or Miguel de Cervantes, MacLean says they dovetail with hockey.

“He’s trying to convince the world of the need for honour. In our world right now, it’s very easy — with BlackBerries and everything else — to be isolated from a deeper conversation about those kinds of lessons.”

“The game has lost a lot of honour,” says Cherry. “There’s no doubt they skate faster and they’re bigger. But they don’t respect one another like they used to and I don’t think the intensity is there.”

Once a day, sometimes twice, Cherry uses the “steamer” in his basement refuge, where he decompresses and sweats alone. When HNIC is on the road, he stays at a hotel with a sauna, regardless of where everyone else is staying.

“It makes me feel good,” he says, of this purging addiction. “I’ve been told all the poison comes out.”

Much of his time and money now goes to charity, something he declines to discuss.

“He doesn’t do something for self-promotion,” explains Williams. “That is one thing I think people may be shocked to hear. Don is about integrity and values. He believes if you do something, you do it for the proper reasons. He’s always believed that real charity is done without publicity.”

But under this layer of altruism — “He’s really just a big softie,” says Orr — beats the heart of an unapologetic street brawler. Make no mistake: Donald Stewart Cherry lives for the fight and thrives on the blowback.

“I think what motivates Dad is a good battle,” says son Tim. “When he retires, I think the thing he will miss the most is the battles with CBC and the battles with the media.”

When I ask Cherry if he ever gets tired of the controversy, he smirks.

“No, I don’t get tired of it,” he says. “I like it. I do.”

The smirk is now a cackle.

“I can hardly wait to get on,” says Cherry, referring to Coach’s Corner during the playoffs. “I get the same feeling.”

For Cherry, you see, it’s all about the feeling. He sizes people up. He makes snap judgments. He follows his gut. When it’s show time, he gazes into what is studio blackness, fixating on the two red camera lights and the sermon he sketched in long hand with a stack of paper and a Sharpie.

He superstitiously follows the same game-day routine as when he played: No out-of-house activities in the morning, afternoon nap, small meal, coffee. He may be the most famous man in hockey but the pre-game nerves remain as jangled as when he was an anonymous defenceman toiling in the minors for 16 years.

“Once that feeling goes, I’m gone,” Cherry says. “That’s how I’ll know.”

In his mind, he is still 32. But if you skip ahead four years, you will find another reason Cherry is still quick to drop the proverbial gloves.

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He is 36 and unemployed. He has played just a single game in the NHL. There are no prospects. He spends months searching for work, mailing resumes, making cold calls, pleading and begging, driving to interviews with his young family in tow.

Nobody helps.

He remains haunted by those achingly long walks back to the car, by the sheepish eye contact he’d make with Rose before shaking his head and opening the door in screeching silence.

“You think that isn’t embarrassing in front of your family?” Cherry asks, his voice suddenly cracking. “I couldn’t get a job sweeping floors.”

Then he gets a call from the Rochester Americans. He is back in hockey.

Nobody, but nobody, will push him out again.

“I sincerely mean this,” he says, leaning forward. “If it stood between somebody dying and me being successful, I would have to do some heavy thinking. I can tell you one thing. Nobody was going to f--- around with me after that.”

Don Cherry, unplugged

On the only change since becoming a celebrity:

“Better suits.”

On language:

“A lot of people talk about my English. I grew up with a lot of Scotchmen and Irishmen that were construction workers. I picked up a lot of their expressions and everything.”

On priorities:

“As long as I can get home at night and have my three or four beers and my steamer (sauna).”

On literature

“Somehow or other I feel better reading books that are old.”

On his first negative review

“It really rocked me. I didn’t know if I could go back on television.”

On nutrition:

“Now I eat right. I never ate vegetables in my life before, lettuce or anything like that. Now I’m eating broccoli. I used to laugh at guys who ate broccoli.”

On why he will never apologize:

“I mean everything I say.”

On the biggest misconception about Don Cherry:

“I don’t know. And I don’t really care, to tell you the truth.” (laughing)

On his 16 years in hockey’s minor leagues:

“It really toughens you. Nothing can hurt you after that.”

On what would’ve happened had he not met first wife Rose:

“I think I’d have turned into an alcoholic.”

On TV sports reporters:

“You see them with their Twitters and their phones. That’s all they do.”

On why he keeps a professional distance from players:

“I won’t criticize them if they are my friends. No job is worth criticizing a friend. So I don’t talk to anybody and nobody talks to me.”

On his TV philosophy:

“I’m a construction worker. I’m not a performer.”

On dying:

“I hope I die in my sleep.”

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