Don Cherry's style as a Hockey Night in Canada commentator was part Don Rickles, part Archie Bunker, and part hockey Dudley Do-Right, all encased in a wardrobe that only Ernie Roth or WKRP's Herb Tarlek could love. Cherry was -- and is -- visceral, rather than cerebral; very much shoot-from-the-hip, stream of consciousness and fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants.

He played that way. He coached that way. He built his own TV brand that way. Agree with him or disagree with him, he didn't really care. Many folks kinda loved him for that.

My own feelings toward Don are complicated.

I would have liked to play for him. The Rangers owned my NHL rights at the time, and would not release me from my deal to pursue an opportunity to compete for a job in the Bruins organization after Cherry was impressed by a fight I had in the preseason with John Wensink. Although I'm an American and not a Canadian, I think I'd have been the type of tough and hard-working player Cherry has always valued. Grapes actually did like Mike Milbury despite him being from the U.S. side of the border. I think my NHL career might have been lengthier had I played for Cherry.

As a referee, I'd chuckle listening to Don rant and rave about calls and officials.
Grapes actually fired a torpedo at me during a Phoenix game when I was working with Paul Devorski. Devo ducked and I called an in-zone high stick in the slot from 30 feet away (positioning sells calls).

Cherry, being Grapes, questioned whether I had the authority to call a penalty in zone "in front of my partner." Of course I did.

Nevertheless, my then management, with the backbones of wet tea bags, immediately dispatched me home from the playoffs after I listened to some bogus terms such as "action area" and being "off the puck." What they really meant was "Don Cherry stirred the pot, so we'd better react."

Even though Devo and I were about equidistant from the slash in the high slot, I know Paul didn't see the stick work because he was in the corner ducking the puck. Cherry never really liked officials or understood much about our jobs. He was scarred for life after linesman John D'Amico called the too many men penalty in the ' 79 playoffs between Montreal and Boston. Merci, Guy LaFleur.

Let's put it this way: I doubt Don ever read the NHL Rule Book or that he could have passed a rules test. But that was part of the whole schtick that Cherry adopted: he didn't really care about analysis or nuances. It was all emotion and vitriol. Correcting Don on things such as the NHL Rule Book was part of Ron McLean's role (Ron actually trained and got certified as an official) as the voice-of-reason half of the duo. To bring it home, Ron was the George Burns to Grapes' Gracie Allen on this show.

As a person, I admire the tireless work that Cherry has done for veterans (both Canadian and U.S.) and supporting our active-duty troops. His career-ending rant this past Saturday started with a well-intentioned notion with which I agree: honoring Canada's veterans on Remembrance Day by wearing a poppy on the lapel.

I have always been moved by the "In Flanders Fields" poem. I have personally been to the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Remembrance Day as a show of respect for the sacrifices made by the people of our neighbors to the North while standing at attention and listening to trumpet play The Last Post.

One can't help but be moved by my friend John McDermott's stirring veterans' songs especially The Green Fields of France. I wear a poppy in respect but, then again, I know what it means because I was taught its significance.

Where Cherry was wrong -- the part that I vehemently disagree with, because of the lessons I learned from my father -- was the "you people" part of the rant. In the United States and Canada, there is a cherished principle of "we the people." Once you divide the house against itself, it cannot stand. Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, "...These dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Any time you divide "we the people" into "you people," it ventures into very dangerous territory. It is misguided and ignorant to paint entire groups with one very broad stroke and cast aspersions on "their" patriotism -- all of it based on something as flimsy as anecdotal "evidence". There is nothing constructive to gain.

We're not talking here about ranting half-baked takes on "good Canadian boys" vs. "chicken Swedes" and "whining Russians" on the ice. After all, "You're a better man than me, Gunga Din." That's a long-since-debunked notion that is almost quaintly anachronistic in 2019. Even Cherry realized 25 years ago that it was a lost cause, and it became kind of a folksy schtick that he kept up as part of his TV persona.

I have been a minority myself within hockey. I was a minority at Groton -- a rough-around-the-edges Irish Catholic kid from Dorchester at a primarily well-heeled school with kids of mostly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant backgrounds. I was a minority when I played for the Quebec Nordiques in the NHL; not just because I wasn't a francophone from Quebec but because I was an American.

What I wanted -- what I craved -- was acceptance. I am proud to be a Groton alum and proud to have played for the Nordiques. Both institutions live deep in my heart. I belonged as much as everyone else who was there. No more and no less.

As long as Cherry's rants were kept on a hockey level, no matter how outrageous or outdated, he was on safe ground. Whenever he started to delve into opinions on Canadian society -- this wasn't the first time -- he was going from the wading pool to the deep end without knowing how to swim. This time, he drowned.

The sad part is that there could have something constructive: Want to say that "we need to especially educate more of our younger and our brand new Canadians coast-to-coast about the meaning of the poppy and Remembrance Day"? I'll agree with that 100 percent, and add that we need the very same thing in the United States about both Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Some of "Those People" just don't know.

Education is a starting place, divisiveness and finger-pointing are not: Within the former, there's room for dialogue, constructive debate and better understanding.

Inevitably and unfortunately, we don't have discourse in politics, either in the U.S. or Canada. What we have are two equally head-strong and demagogic camps -- left vs right -- that waste everyone else's time and money with things that detract and distract from making any actual progress on things we'd all agree are needed. That's especially true when any sort of compromise or shared credit/blame is involved. We need to both philosophically and in actual construction rebuild the present infra structure so that we can all move forward, both in our relationships with people and when we are motoring across rusted bridges in our cars.

It's an atrocious state of affairs,but sadly not surprising. We missed an opportunity for dialogue on traditional and symbolic ways Canadians (and those in the U.S.) honor those who paid the ultimate price for our freedoms. Both sides have turned it into yet another "us versus "them" pissing contest, except the "us and them" they're identifying may vary. Each side is trying to outshout the other.

I used to love the "All in the Family" television show. Carroll O'Connor, who in his real life was of fairly liberal political leanings and a highly educated man, played uneducated, arch-conservative Archie as a flesh-and-blood human being beneath the bluster. Additionally, as much as his foil, ultra-liberal son-in-law Mike, used to bicker and yell endlessly and stubbornly, each was a lot more like the other than they cared to admit.

Among many outstanding episodes, there was one that stands out in my mind that has relevance to the Don Cherry situation. At a dinner at the Bunkers' house, Mike has a friend who moved to Canada to evade the draft. Archie has a friend whose son died in combat.

Naturally, Archie and Mike bicker in circles about who was right and who was wrong. Finally, the fallen soldier's dad says to Archie words to the effect of "my son died to protect the right of your son-in-law's friend to protest the war and move to Canada." The argument stopped cold.

I have never felt threatened by opposing viewpoints or sought only ones that validate how I feel about an issue. I don't agree with Cherry's "you people" statement or turning Remembrance Day into a statement about who does or doesn't respect the freedoms of living in a democratic country.

But I think I disagree even more with Cherry being pulled off the air at age 85 for speaking his mind uncensored in the same manner that he always has. The decision was made only due to the reactions to the segment; with zero ownership that Cherry had been ALLOWED by his bosses for years and years to opine and ramble off the cuff however he saw fit. Only when there was a backlash that did not subside within 24 hours or so was there a decision made to just wash their hands of Cherry for doing what he has always done and accept no accountability as his employer or sponsor.

Either there is freedom of speech or there isn't. The true test of one's commitment to freedom of speech is to protect the right to express even views that one finds odious -- and to be crystal clear that you view it as such.

There was NOTHING brave about suddenly firing Cherry, or "resigning him" nor in corporate sponsors pulling back all of the sudden. Don is many things to many people, but one thing he absolutely is NOT is opaque.

No one suddenly grew a backbone here because Cherry was finally fired. Nobody suddenly found their moral compass. This was a decision born of it being easier to simply blame one person (or two, if you include McLean not speaking at all during the segment and then ending with he and Cherry doing their signature thumbs up at the end).

Call it "political correctness" if you want, but that's a loaded phrase. Call it the corrosive climate of today's corporate and political cultures. Call it whatever you want, but I don't think the situation was handled well by anyone involved on either side.

I think Don's ultimate failure here was his failure to keep the focus where it actually belonged: honoring and remembering the sacrifices of a nation's veterans and with that said, also his "expertise" in Hockey. Keep the focus on the vets themselves -- vets from many, many different backgrounds and family histories -- and encourage all people to wear a symbolic poppy. Using Hockey to help unite all of our various peoples and teaching all to cherish our national freedoms as a united people.... we, not me vs. you or us vs. them.

All that's happened this week is further sowing of seeds of division, more finger-pointing, another hatchet blow at the ideological foundation our nations were built upon; imperfectly as it may have been because it's a human history.

"We must all hang together or surely we shall all hang separately." Ben Franklin, Continental Congress, 1776.

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A 2018 inductee into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

Visit Paul's official websites, YaWannaGo.com and Officiating by Stewart.