When I was in the first grade, my hometown junior hockey team, the Granby Bisons, played the team from Trois-Rivières. After trailing Trois-Rivières for a while, Granby had finally managed to tie the game. Trois-Rivières decided to change up their goalie and put Mannon Rhéaume in net. 

My little, six-year-old mind was blown. A girl! Playing hockey! With boys! 

Rhéaume played for a bit, though she ultimately had to leave the game with a bloody face after a shot had shattered her mask. It didn’t matter though; my perception of what girls could and couldn’t do was changed forever. 

A year later, Rhéaume would be the first woman to play in an NHL game for the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a historic moment for hockey and for little girls in Quebec. But not everybody liked the idea. One hockey commentator stood out in particular at the time for his overt disdain calling the whole thing a “PR stunt” and stating that Rhéaume should “stick to women’s hockey.” 

That was the first time I learned who Don Cherry was. 

We often talk about the “two solitudes” that exist in this country between Québec and the rest of English Canada and few subjects represent the two solitudes better than Don Cherry. While Cherry is beloved by much of English Canada, you’d be hard pressed to find a Francophone Quebecker who thinks of Cherry in a positive light. 

Some of Cherry’s greatest hits of anti-Quebec and anti-French commentary include saying “only Europeans and........

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