The Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Boxing legend Joe Louis. Labatt Breweries. And the Toronto Blue Jays. Believe it or not there’s an interesting connection between these four entities spanning several decades.
The Winnipeg Football Club was established in 1930. They were originally called the Winnipeg Rugby Football Club but dropped the “Rugby” from the team’s name not long after being formed. The team was unofficially known simply as the Winnipegs or the ‘Pegs for short. In the early days, the club wore green and white uniforms before quickly adopting blue and gold as their team colours. This colour choice plays an important part of the story as you will see.
In 1935, Winnipeg travelled east to Hamilton and beat the hometown Tigers 18-12 in the Grey Cup. The victory gave the Winnipegs the distinction of becoming the first western team to win the Grey Cup championship. Enthusiastic crowds welcomed home the Winnipegs, and businesses lined up to congratulate the new champions of “Canadian rugby.”
Around the same time, an African American by the name of Joe Louis was taking the professional boxing world by storm. He was given the racialized nickname “The Brown Bomber” by American media. The story goes that a local Winnipeg journalist named Vince Leah, catching wind of the “Brown Bomber” nickname, referred to the Winnipegs as the “Blue Bombers of Western Football.”
The name stuck, and the football club became known as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers ever since.
In the 1950s, Labatt Breweries introduced a new brand of beer in the Manitoba market. With its colourful blue labelling, Winnipeg football fans referred to the beer as Labatt “Blue.” Labatt eventually adopted the name officially and became a sponsor of the Blue Bombers and the CFL.
Fast forward a couple decades later. Toronto was awarded an expansion franchise in Major League Baseball. Labatt Breweries had a significant ownership stake in the new team and wanted to leverage its Labatt Blue brand. Toronto’s other two sports teams – the Argonauts and the Maple Leafs – both had blue as a team colour. The writing was on the wall. Toronto’s new sport team was also going to be blue. So, the Toronto Blue Jays were born.
Further reading:
Football in Winnipeg (Manitoba Museum)
Labatt Blue origins (Labatt website)
This is the fifth of a series of posts that will explore the stories behind the names of the existing Canadian Football League teams. See the previous post on the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
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