We were very sad to hear recently that one of our favourite Toronto athletes-- basketball player Pascal Siakam, aka P-Skills, aka Spicy P-- has been traded. How much do people around here love Pascal? Well, right now, McDonald's restaurants in every province except Quebec are featuring the Siakam Swirl McFlurry, so you know he must be pretty popular!
Siakam is from Cameroon originally but has kind of established a special relationship with Toronto/Canada/Raptors fans over the past eight years and it feels like everyone is sad to see him go! He wrote a sort of goodbye letter that was published today ( https://www.theplayerstribune.com/posts/pascal-siakam-toronto-raptors-indianapolis-pacers-nba-basketball ) and it was quite touching to read. We thought we'd say our own goodbye tonight with what will probably be our last Siakam Swirl McFlurry, since we doubt McDonald's will bring it back now that he's not a Raptor anymore.
The McFlurry was named Siakam Swirl in reference to Pascal's signature move, which is a kind of spin, and it's supposed to reflect the Raptors colours (red, white, and black) with its red Smarties, vanilla ice cream, and fudge.
@darchibald I know of Flutie Flakes (one of my brothers was a big Doug Flutie fan when he played in the CFL) but I haven't heard of the other one! I think Raptors and Blue Jays players get next-level fame sometimes, because those are the only teams we have in the whole country for those sports. They sort of become Canada's teams rather than Toronto's. Our whole country's population is only in the same range as California's, but still, it kind of makes the entire country one big market for those two teams. Of course it's not a hard and fast rule that people cheer for them, especially in baseball where it seems there are more often older allegiances to American teams than in basketball, but generally speaking...
