With the Toronto Blue Jays’ upcoming potential World Series appearance, many are reflecting on the team’s last championship win in 1993, courtesy of Joe Carter’s iconic home run. This victory marked the Jays’ second consecutive championship, a feat they have not replicated since.
In Saskatoon, the memory of that triumph is intertwined with a riot that ensued post-game. Following Carter’s historic hit, thousands of celebratory fans flooded Eighth Street in the city. What began as elation soon turned chaotic, resulting in vandalized cars and businesses, the deployment of tear gas, and numerous arrests.
This week, city archivist Jeff O’Brien revisited the events of the riot while speaking with host Stephanie Massicotte on CBC’s Saskatoon Morning.
Initially, the atmosphere was festive, as an estimated 4,000 individuals waved Canadian flags, hung out of car windows, and reveled in the moment. “I mean, that sounds like a pretty good time,” O’Brien remarked. “Then things took a turn.”
Following the Blue Jays 1993 World Series win, fans poured onto 8th Street in Saskatoon. It soon turned into a riot.
Law enforcement in the vicinity found themselves overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the crowd. The escalation of the situation remains a point of contention, with conflicting accounts of how events spiraled out of control.
According to O’Brien, the following day’s Saskatoon StarPhoenix quoted individuals attributing the chaos to the police intervention. “So there were suggestions that the police overreacted,” he explained.
To address the situation, the police summoned the riot squad and invoked the Criminal Code Section 67, colloquially known as the riot act. O’Brien elucidated that this centuries-old law stipulates the dispersal of unlawfully assembled groups of 12 or more individuals within 30 minutes, with non-compliance resulting in arrests.
Reflecting on the events, former CBC Saskatoon radio host Garth Materie, who was present on Eighth Street that night after watching the game at a local establishment, recounted the chaos in a 2015 interview with Saskatoon Morning.
“People started to pour back into the place and they were all tearing [up], and their noses were running, and they were coughing,” Materie shared. “Then someone yelled out, ‘the cops are throwing tear gas around.'”
He ventured outside to witness an agitated crowd engaging in violent behavior. “There’s bottles and tire irons and all kind of stuff getting thrown at anybody in uniform,” Materie recalled.
Materie revealed that CBC later discovered the police had been instructed to keep Eighth Street accessible to traffic at all costs. Failing to do so prompted the deployment of tear gas by the authorities, further fueling the crowd’s anger.