A poppy lapse

Is it my imagination, or have people gotten very silly about poppies in the last decade?

Over the past decade in particular, it seems we have some sort of poppy kerfuffle every Remembrance Day.

One year it was the Battle of the White Poppies versus the Red Poppies. Wearers of the white poppies thought red poppies glorified war, and red-poppy-wearers thought white poppy proponents were either presumptuous or unpatriotic.

Another year, we had the using-flags-to-anchor-your-poppy controversy, in which legionnaires declared that poppies were "sacred" and it was improper to fix them with anything other than the flimsy pins they come with.

This year, it's - heaven help us - Don Cherry. For those of you who are not Canadian and/or do not view hockey as the best thing created, Don Cherry is a long-time hockey-coach-cum-commentator, renowned for his unbelievably high collars, eye-watering suits, and loud, unvarnished pronouncements. This past weekend, he apparently thought the Saturday night hockey game was the ideal platform for airing his view that "you people" who "come here, whatever it is" "should pay a buck for a poppy". Apparently Cherry spotted some poppy-less people, who he believed to be immigrants. Let's see, how? They were darker-skinned than he is? They were dressed differently than he is? (No, forget that second one; we're all dressed differently than he is.)

Anyway, he's apparently offended by non-poppy-wearing newcomers, given that they're now living in the land of "milk and honey", courtesy of the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers.

Let's leave aside the horrors that many new Canadians have escaped, and the sacrifices they themselves have made. If the wearing of the poppy is mandatory, as Cherry believes - as I write this, he's just defiantly said that all Canadians should wear a poppy - doesn't that negate the very freedoms for which so many died?

I wear a red poppy, secured with a decorative pin. That's my choice. My fellow Canadians, darn it, have the right to wear a red poppy, a white poppy, a poppy with a pin, a poppy secured with flag pin, or no poppy at all.

That's their choice, Mr. Cherry. You have no right to bully them into doing things your way.

Now, I gather that Don Cherry has finally been fired. I'm not sure that this will solve anything.

I do worry that his comments will give courage to others, who will make life in this land of milk and honey less sweet for those who have committed the sin of daring not to be born here.