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A guide to the Toronto Blue Jays playoff drought for non-sports fans

Today, the Toronto Blue Jays will snap the longest playoff absence in North American pro sports when they play against the Texas Rangers at Rogers Centre, their first Major League Baseball post-season tilt since Joe Carter touched em all in 1993.

While theres plenty of hype from long-time fans and bandwagon-hitchers alike, non-sports fans might have some trouble conceptualizing just how long its really been.

To put it all into perspective, here are just a few things that have happened since the last time the Jays were contenders:

October 25, 1993

Just two days after the Jays win their last World Series, Kim Campbell and her Progressive Conservatives lose in a landslide to Jean Chretien and his Liberals in the federal election. Campbell, who serves as PM for all of five months, is Canadas first, and to this day, only female prime minister.

June 12, 1995

Quebec votes on a referendum to split from Canada. With more than 93 per cent turnout, the province is barely (at 51 per cent) voted in favour of staying. The rest of Canada has an upstanding, trouble-free relationship with the province ever since.

May 14, 1997

Toronto filmmaker Atom Egoyan screens The Sweet Hereafter at the Cannes Film Festival, where it eventually wins the Grand Prix. The film is later nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, marking it the first and last time a Canadian film is nominated.

January 2, 1998

The former boroughs of East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and York are amalgamated with the City of Toronto to form the new megacity, despite people being overwhelmingly against it.

January 14, 1999

Mayor Mel Lastman calls in the troops to help Toronto out of an especially nasty winter storm. The SOS brings 438 soldiers and 128 military vehicles to the city, whiling giving the rest of the country plenty of anti-Toronto fodder for the next decade. Despite national ridicule, Lastman says he would do it again.

February 2, 2005

Rogers Communications buys the SkyDome and renames it the Rogers Centre. Some fans are not too keen on the Rogers takeover, but support the Jays nonetheless.

July 20, 2005

Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage countrywide with the Civil Marriage Act. Ten years later, the institution of marriage has yet to be destroyed, despite fears at the time.

April 26, 2008

Thousands of commuters are left in limbo when all buses, trains, and streetcars are suspended due to a TTC strike. The Amalgamated Transit Unit (ATU), whose reps organized the strike, gives only 90 minutes notice to the city. Back-to-work legislation is passed the next day by the province, and service is mostly back to normal later that evening.

June 26, 2010

At the G20 summit, police arrest more than one thousand people. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages are incurred, as well as a radical legacy.

June 2, 2012

A shooting at the Eaton Centre kills one, injures seven. Brett Lawrie, the Blue Jays then-third baseman, is at the mall during the shooting and live-tweet the incident.

March 28, 2013

Gawker reports seeing a video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. The Toronto Star quickly reports to have also seen the video, and in October, so does Police Chief Bill Blair.

The rest is history.

website@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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