In order to get the Bootstrap Toast component to work, I had to add the following Javascript code to the page. Was this something the developers forgot when they added the feature to BSS?
It seems it's also necessary to declare a source for the jquery library. This was the code I had to use to get the Toast Component to work
<script src="assets/js/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
$('.toast').toast('show');
});
</script>
Sorry for replying so late! This is unfortunately how toasts work in Bootstrap - you need to show them manually with JavaScript.
As for the second part about requiring jQuery, I think this may be because you are including your JS in the head of the page instead of a JS file. JS files are always added to the page after jQuery, so including it would not be necessary.