ETOBICOKE – It’s been a week of changes for Ford family businesses with the pivot of KyKy Kookies to KyKy’s Cookies and Ice Cream and now, an apology and promise of change from Kyra Ford, owner of Swastika Sweets.
“I never made the connection between swastika, a portmanteau I personally made up of my favourite Sir-Mix-A-Lot album and my favourite internet dog. I’ve never made the connection between swastikas and all that bad stuff, and it’s heartbreaking to me that people online are doing that,” said Ford.
Ford also promised to remove some controversial products including their double pastry twists (in the shape of an 88), chevron pie crusts (that resemble sig runes), and autumn art sugar cookies (cookies painstakingly hand-painted with a detailed reichsadler). Her apology continued with promises to educate herself, “do the work”, and a personal commitment to share at least one Canva slide with Holocaust information on her IG story. However, Ford’s apology rings hollow when contextualized with her past gaffes.
Earlier this year, Ford made a similar public apology when Swastika Sweets listed a Thin Blue Raspberry Line Slushee as one of their monthly features, promising that she “never made the connection between the term thin blue line and pro-policing…[as she] thought it was a pregnancy reference.”
Last month, she apologized and removed references to the shop’s featured pastry, the Anti-Critical Race Theory Tart, citing confusion that she was actually “anti-critical towards runners as sort of like a body positivity thing” and that it was Twitter’s fault for assuming the meaning. On Thursday, Ford publicly said sorry for rebranding her shop’s penny candy as “poverty confections”, stating that she “honestly forgot poor people existed, my bad!”
Though Kyra Ford’s past actions haven’t given way to better behaviour, Ford seems to be more open to improvement this time. “My sisters and I, we see ourselves as Ontario’s Kardashians,” said Ford. “Mostly in the sense that we are constantly getting into trouble over cultural sensitivities and having massive blindspots for anything that doesn’t affect us personally and directly. But I truly do apologize for whichever thing we were talking about and I promise to do better.”
Amidst the outrage and plan to rework the brand, Swastika Sweets’ website has been taken down and all references to it have been scrubbed from the internet, save for a few fetish sites who reposted photos of some of the gooier desserts.
“No matter what, I’ll be back,” said Ford with a smile. “It doesn’t matter what outrage or criticism or bullying comes my way, there will always be a little corner of the internet reserved for people with rich parents to have a second or third or ninth chance.”
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