An Edmonton woman expressed concerns about a Sylvan Lake restaurant’s social media post deeming it “inappropriate.”
On Aug. 27 Hockey Central Sports Lounge made a post to their Facebook page referencing the recent protests in major sports as a way to advertise the restaurants daily food specials.
Jasmine Carter, who visits Sylvan Lake during staycations, says when she first read the post in her Facebook feed she felt the statement was ignorant to what is going on in the world.
The post, which has since been deleted, read “sick of politics interrupting your sports? So are we so to protest the protesting we are offering all our daily food specials for the next two days!”
“They were so disappointed that people weren’t going to be playing sports so they decided to put a sale on chicken wings, like that just seems absolutely racist and disgusting to me,” said Carter.
Carter reached out to Hockey Central to let them know she felt the message in the post was wrong and it should be removed. The post was then edited to exclude the protest reference before it was taken down entirely.
Kristi-Lee Bolton, owner of Hockey Central, says the post was meant to give people a reason to go to the restaurant until the NHL returned to the ice.
“I just tried to make a clever play on words, it wasn’t meant to be offensive,” said Bolton. “I didn’t say I don’t believe in BLM, I didn’t say any of that, I just said I’m giving you a reason to still come to Hockey Central.”
“This was just advertisement, that’s all it was and it wasn’t offensive and it wasn’t meant to be offensive and I’m sorry she took it that way,” she continued.
Bolton added she can’t sit on either side of the “political fence” as a business and was not taking a position on the issue.
“I thought this was a clever play on words, it was taken the wrong way and too far,” she said, explaining comments and reviews were left by a small handful of people.
The reviews state the restaurant is trying to “profit off the murder of innocent people” and “making light of the situation.”
Bolton says the problem is the way others use social media to tear others down, while Carter says she didn’t mean for it to be harmful in that manner.
“I do think it should be talked about and that we should be OK to talk about it if that means things can change for the better,” said Carter.
Bolton says she received no other complaints about the post.