Don Cherry
The outspoken Canadian hockey icon known as Grapes.
Donald Stewart Cherry (born February 5, 1934) is a Canadian former ice hockey player, coach, and television commentator. He played one game in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Boston Bruins. After concluding a playing career in the American Hockey League, he coached the Bruins for five seasons leading the team to four division titles and two appearances in the Stanley Cup Final. From 1986 to 2019, Cherry co-hosted Coach's Corner—a segment aired during CBC's Saturday-night NHL broadcast Hockey Night in Canada, with Ron MacLean.
Nicknamed Grapes, he is known for his outspoken manner and opinions, and his flamboyant dress. By the 2018–19 NHL season, Cherry and MacLean had hosted Coach's Corner for 33 seasons. From 1984 to 2019, Cherry hosted Grapevine, a short-form radio segment with fellow sportscaster Brian Williams. He created and starred in the direct-to-video series Don Cherry's Rock'em Sock'em Hockey from 1989 to 2018.
In 2004, Cherry was voted by viewers as the seventh-greatest Canadian of all time in the CBC miniseries The Greatest Canadian. In 2010, his life was dramatized in a two-part CBC movie, Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story, based on a script written by his son, Timothy Cherry. In 2012, CBC aired a sequel, The Wrath of Grapes: The Don Cherry Story II. Cherry has expressed controversial political views for which he has faced criticism, including remarks he made regarding Canada's lack of support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and denying climate change.
In November 2019, Cherry was fired by Sportsnet from Hockey Night in Canada for making controversial statements that have been variously described as anti-immigration, xenophobic, or racist, about Canadian immigrants during his show.
Quick Facts
- Team
- Boston Bruins
Lore & Background
Cherry was born in Kingston, Ontario, to Delmar (Del) and Maude Cherry. His paternal grandfather, Sub/Cst. John T. (Jack) Cherry, was an original member of the North-West Mounted Police (now Royal Canadian Mounted Police), and a Great Lakes ship captain. His maternal grandfather, Richard Palamountain, was a British orphan of Cornish parentage who emigrated to Canada as one of the Home Children.
The name, Palamountain, is a corruption of the Cornish language 'pol-mun-tyr' meaning 'pool by the mineral land'. Palamountain was also a veteran of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Cherry's father Del was an amateur athlete and worked as an electrician with the Canadian Steamship Lines. On the March 15, 2008, edition of Coach's Corner, Cherry wore the green and gold colours of County Kerry, Ireland.
In his segment following the game, he claimed ancestry from that region. Cherry's younger brother, Dick Cherry played hockey at various levels, including two seasons in the National Hockey League with the Philadelphia Flyers. In his first year with the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League, he met his future wife Rosemarie (Rose) Cherry née Madelyn Martini (born 1935 in Hershey, Pennsylvania). Rose was hugely influential in Don's life—because of Don's minor-league hockey lifestyle, they moved 53 times; they rarely had decent housing or furnishings, and Don was often away playing during major events, such as the birth of their daughter and first child, Cindy Cherry.
Six years after Cindy's birth, Rose gave birth to son Tim Cherry. When Tim needed a kidney transplant at age 13, Cindy donated one of hers. As of 2006, the two lived across the street from each other, around the corner from their father, in Mississauga. Rose died of liver cancer on June 1, 1997, and in honour of her perseverance, Don created Rose Cherry's Home for Kids.
Her name has motivated Cherry to always wear a rose on his lapel. Cherry contributed to developing Rose Cherry's Home for Kids which has since been renamed to The Darling Home for Kids, in Milton, Ontario. The Mississauga Sports and Entertainment Centre in Mississauga, is located on Rose Cherry Place, a street named for his late wife. In 1999, Don married his second wife, Luba.
Reader's Guide
Cherry played junior ice hockey with the Barrie Flyers and the Windsor Spitfires in the Ontario Hockey Association. Cherry won the Memorial Cup while playing defence in Barrie in 1953. He dropped out of high school, and in 1954 he signed with the American Hockey League's (AHL) Hershey Bears. Cherry had a long playing career in professional minor hockey, and in 1955 played his only NHL game when the Boston Bruins called him up during the playoffs.
According to Cherry, a baseball injury suffered in the off-season kept him from making the NHL, despite his almost 20 years playing in the minor leagues. He retired as a player in 1970, but came out of retirement two years later to play 19 final games with the Rochester Americans. Cherry won the Calder Cup championship (AHL) four times—1960 with the Springfield Indians, and 1965, 1966, 1968 with Rochester. He also won the Lester Patrick Cup, the Western Hockey League Championship, with the Vancouver Canucks in 1969.
After the end of the 1968–69 season, his playing career was essentially over. Cherry struggled for a time as a Cadillac salesman and a construction worker. He worked as a house painter earning $2 per hour. In the middle of the 1971–72 season, Cherry became the coach of the American Hockey League's Rochester Americans.
The following year, the title of General Manager was added. In his third season behind the bench, Cherry was voted the league's Coach of the Year. After his three-year stint in Rochester, he was promoted to the NHL as head coach of the Boston Bruins for the 1974–75 season. The Bruins were coming off a successful run of two Stanley Cups and three first-place finishes, but after Cherry's first season as coach the team would see the exit of superstars Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito.
Cherry quickly developed a reputation for being an eccentric, flamboyant coach who strongly encouraged physical play among his players. According to Cherry, he moulded the Bruins' playing style after that of his dog, Blue, a feisty bullterrier. While the team had been known for Orr and Esposito who were highly skilled scorers, the 1975–76 Bruins started the season in brief slump in part due to Orr's knee injury that saw him play only ten games, plus Orr would become a free agent at the end of the season. Cherry remade the team with enforcers and grinders which became known as the 'lunch-pail gang' (or 'lunch pail A.C.
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