Hmm. This baggage fee is a far worse deal than it appears then. If they charged you the fee in each direction of your trip, that's fine, but for each leg means you could, on a couple stops for whatever reason, end up adding an extra hundred bucks to your trip if you had to carry a bag or two.

No wonder they're so reluctant to phase it out.

And so to answer, yes, rather than last flight in and first flight out I asked for a later flight out to save the rush of getting in at midnight and dealing with LAX at 7AM on Monday with a toddler. So it was technically a stopover, not a connection. And, yes, I picked up the two bags.

It's still a bit ridiculous; and the Toronto agent shouldn't have told me to show the receipt.