doug ford ice cream

People are really upset over this photo of Doug Ford eating ice cream

Ontario Premier Doug Ford got ratioed hard on Twitter this weekend for a seemingly-innocuous post asking followers if they could guess his "favourite ice cream."

The post included a photo of Ford eating ice cream with a spoon, from a cup, in a t-shirt, in front of a Kawartha Dairy van. The van also bears the word "Bobcaygeon," which is where you'll find the popular Ontario-based dairy company's head office and production plant.

Hashtagged with #IceCreamDay, the tweet suggests that a national day-of-the-year dedicated to ice cream would ever take place in December. It does not.

Posted at 7:46 p.m. on Sunday, December 13, the tweet had racked up nearly 3,000 replies as of Monday afternoon (contrasted against 808 retweets and about 2,100 hearts).

Reactions are mixed, but emotions appear to be high across the board.

Many people expressed confusion over why the premier would suddenly post a photo of himself eating ice cream, in December, in the middle of an unprecedented global health crisis.

This was indeed the overwhelming sentiment in the comment thread under Ford's ice cream photo.

Some on Twitter pointed out that Ontario had reported 1,677 new cases of COVID-19 that very morning, along with 16 deaths.

Others shared personal stories with Ford to illustrate why the tweet had offended them.

The question of whether or not Ford was paid by the more than 80-year-old Kawartha Dairy company for his endorsement — through campaign donations or otherwise — also came up quite a bit, as it did when he shared numerous McDonald's-related videos on social media earlier in the fall.

As did calls for the Ford government to lift pandemic restrictions on small businesses. 

Many took the opportunity to create their own punny ice cream flavours, such as "Oxygen Maskin-Robbins" and "Pralines and long term care home neglect."

Others didn't mince words. Instead, they flat out called Ford's tweet callous, cowardly, indecentdisgusting, insensitive and beyond comprehension.

I'm not going to repeat the shots taken at Ford's physique, but there were plenty of those as well.

"It's hard to imagine a better photo to encourage the rest of us to eat smart, avoid dairy and sugar, and exercise daily," wrote someone in one of the less-crass tweets on the subject.

But again, the overwhelming majority of replies to Ford's ice cream tweet contained messages of disbelief and disappointment in the premier's decision to publish such a frivolous message during a seriously troubling time for the province.

"Frankly I don't care what your favourite ice cream flavour is. There are far more important things I'd like to know," reads one.

"Like why are you sitting on $12 billion in fed cash while children are stuffed in poorly ventilated classrooms, hospitals and long-term care homes are horribly overburdened?"

"This sort of social media content from a politico is cute and humanizing if they aren't complete failures who prioritize big business and bigots over...everything," remarked one Twitter user.

"I hope your ice cream melts and then refreezes before you eat it. May you be plagued by ice crystals and freezer burn."

Lead photo by

Doug Ford


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