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1. The Toronto Blue Jays are named after the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. And the story of how that happened involves booze, boxing, and one of the most infamous kidnappings in Canadian history. A thread! 
2. April 7, 1977. As a zamboni clears the snow and Anne Murray sings the national anthem, Toronto’s brand new Major League Baseball team prepares to take the field for the very first time.
3. They’d gotten their name the year before thanks to a “Name The Team” contest. Over the course of five weeks, more than 30,000 entries flooded in, suggesting more than 4,000 different possibilities.
4. Toronto’s baseball team could have been called The Towers or The Trilliums. The Hogtowners or The Orangemen. The Iroquois or Algonquins. The Godfreys or The Crombies. The Fighting Turtles or The Sea Fleas. The Unicorns, The Peacocks or The Hippos. The Sad Sacks. The Titanics.
5. But one theme united many of the suggestions: the word “blue.” There were The Blues, The Blue Sox, The Blue Shoes, The Blue Hats, The Blue Bonnets, The Blue Bats, The Blue Balls (yikes), The Blue Bloods, The Blue Beavers, The Blue Birds…
6. The reason for all those “blue” names was obvious. You might even know why. But it’s just half of the story. You can keep digging from there…
7. Meet the Labatt brothers: John and Hugh. They were the grandsons of John Kinder Labatt — the fellow who opened a brewery in London, Ontario in 1847, which would go on to become one of the most successful businesses in Canada.
8. But the brothers chance to run the company together was nearly cut short — in 1934, John came face to face with death in a harrowing ordeal that made headlines around the country.
9. It began on a dusty gravel road outside London. John was dragged out of his car by three men, forced to write a ransom note to his brother, and then driven up to a cottage in Muskoka where his kidnappers blindfolded him and chained him to a bed.
10. The ransom note instructed Hugh to check in at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, where he would be contacted by a man named Three-Fingered Abe — the leader of the kidnappers. Hugh would have to pay $150,000 to save his brother’s life.
11. Hugh headed to the Royal York just as he was told, but word of the kidnapping got out. As reporters descended on the hotel, the story hit the front pages. The kidnappers panicked. They were in over their head.
12. So they drove John Labatt back down from Muskoka, brought him to the corner of Vaughan Road and St. Clair Avenue, and just let him go. He was free. It was all finally over.
13. Having survived the terrible experience and come safely out the other side, John and Hugh would run the company together for many years to come. And in the early 1950s, they introduced two new beers.
14. They called the first beer the “Anniversary Ale”, celebrating 50 years of partnership between the two brothers — a liquid testament to their love and resolve in the face of that harrowing ordeal. In time, that beer would become known as Labatt 50.
15. The second beer was inspired by Hugh’s recent trip to the city Czech city of Pilsen. The following year, the Labatt Brewing Company introduced a brand new lager. It was called “Labatt Pilsener”.
16. At first, the new lager was only available in Ontario. But five years later, when it was finally introduced to the province of Manitoba, it found a loyal new group of fans in Winnipeg.
17. Winnipeg’s CFL team was created as an amalgamation of local rugby and football teams — with roots going back all the way to the 1870s. But they didn’t have a great name: the Winnipeg Winnipegs Rugby Football Club would eventually be known as just “The Winnipegs”.
18. But on a fateful day in 1935, that all changed. That’s when a sportswriter at the Winnipeg Tribune, Vince Leah, decided to borrow a phrase from the famous American sportswriter Grantland Rice…
19. Rice had given a famous nickname to one of the greatest boxers in the history of the world. He called Joe Louis, “The Brown Bomber” — which became the most popular of Louis’ many racialized nicknames.
20. So Leah, in tribute, called the Winnipeg football team, in their snazzy blue uniforms, “The Blue Bombers of Western football”. And the name stuck.
21. When Labatt Pilsener arrived Winnipeg with its flashy blue label, the beer won a place in the hearts of Blue Bomber fans. They adopted it as part of their fandom and they gave it a simple new nickname: Blue.
22. Soon, that nickname began to stick, too—in no small part thanks to golden age of Blue Bombers football, which saw the team win back-to-back Grey Cups in 1958 and '59. Labatt officially adopted the nickname in the early 1960s & even became the official sponsor of the CFL.
23. But a decade later, Labatt was still struggling to promote itself as a *Canadian* brand. A study found that most Canadians assumed Labatt was actually a foreign business — owned by Schlitz or the Pall Mall cigarette company.
24. So, encouraged by their success with the Blue Bombers, Labatt decided they should go even bigger: associate themselves with another major Canadian sports team. And thus, they helped lead the charge to bring Major League Baseball to Canada.
25. The Labatt Brewing Company owned 45% of Toronto’s new baseball team. And since Labatt Blue was now their flagship brew—about to become the most popular of all Canadian beers—all those blue entries in the naming contest were clearly meant to curry their favour… and it worked.
26. It came as no surprise when a panel including Labatt executives seized their chance: the new baseball team would be named after the beer that was named after the Blue Bombers. The Toronto Blue Jays were born.
Annnnnnd that's it — thanks for reading! If you're interested, our most recent @thisiscanadiana video dives into the story behind the name of another CFL team. The hidden history of B.C.'s Lions:
