‘The Social’ cast member Jessica Allen clarifies Cherry comments
Posted November 13, 2019 1:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO — A correspondent on the Canadian daytime talk show “The Social” has clarified her hot-button on-air comments about Don Cherry’s firing from “Hockey Night in Canada.”
Jessica Allen ruffled feathers yesterday when discussing Cherry’s dismissal from the “Coach’s Corner” segment of “Hockey Night in Canada” on Monday after he suggested on air that immigrants don’t wear poppies.
Allen told viewers yesterday that she doesn’t “worship at the altar of hockey” and found in her experience that those who do “all tended to be white boys” who “were often bullies” from affluent families.
In today’s opening segment of the CTV series, Allen acknowledged that she “struck a nerve with many people.”
She said she was only speaking to her lived, often negative, experiences with the sport and not to hockey families and their children.
Allen added that her experiences with hockey “certainly don’t negate how much good the sport does for communities and families across the country.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2019.
The Canadian Press
