Nearly five years after his high-profile departure from Hockey Night in Canada, Don Cherry is far removed from his time in the national spotlight.
But after his daughter Cindy passed away unexpectedly at the age of 67 earlier this summer, colleagues of the former CBC and Sportsnet host have been helping Cherry grieve.
Toronto Sun‘s Joe Warmington, a longtime friend of Cherry’s, wrote in an article Monday that a familiar face to Canadians has been among those consoling Cherry.
“Many are trying to help him get there, including his old Coach’s Corner sidekick, Ron MacLean, who recently brought over Tim Hortons coffee. They talked for an hour, which is important since the duo’s very public breakup on a Saturday night in 2019 still hurts [Cherry] and his fans,” Warmington wrote.
“If I am honest, I am not over it,” Cherry told Warmington about Cindy’s death.
Cherry has been off the air from CBC and Sportsnet since November 2019, following his comments about a perceived lack of immigrants wearing poppies around Remembrance Day, comments he has since doubled down to on multiple occasions.
In the aftermath of the incident, MacLean offered up a series of apologies on Cherry’s behalf over the coming weeks, calling the remarks “hurtful, discriminatory… [and] flat-out wrong” the day after a broadcast of the now-defunct Hometown Hockey show.
In the first Hockey Night in Canada show five days after Cherry’s firing, MacLean gave a five-minute monologue that seemed to try to toe the line to reclaim his own career and his connection with Cherry.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be friends again,” Cherry said about MacLean in a video posted to social media in May 2022 by Warmington, saying he felt betrayed by MacLean in the weeks following his dismissal.
In an interview with the Bob McCown Podcast in 2023, MacLean said that the two were always more work partners rather than good friends, but eventually got back in touch.
MacLean added that he and Cherry still share a set of Toronto Maple Leafs season seats together, one of the hottest tickets in pro sports.
“We were always polar opposites in terms of our politics. And it’s funny as the world has become more and more that way, you can almost feel us drifting apart further,” MacLean added. “We function beautifully as work colleagues, but we were never the kind of friends [to be close away from work] just because we were so different.”
MacLean returns to his duties on Hockey Night in Canada again this season, a position he has held since 1986.
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