The debates at the Toronto City Council have been going on for a while now. The discussions have been heated lately.
The mayor has definitely expressed his wholehearted approval of the plan to build a casino in Toronto. Those who advocate for said plan say that a casino will bring about $200M a year to Toronto and probably 10,000 new jobs.,
The proprietors from Las Vegas who are competing to get the contract to build this humungous enterprise had made presentations to the people of Toronto to show how exciting and profitable it will be if they are chosen to undertake the Enterprise.
It will not just be a casino, they said. There will be shopping centers and other entertainments. Very tempting indeed!
But let us see the realities around us. Toronto is now one of the great cities in North America. It has grown rapidly in the last forty years. When I came to Toronto in 1973, I thought this was a boring place. Most of the buildings were old.
On Sundays, stores and entertainment places were closed. I was of course comparing it to Manila, where almost all commercial places were open seven days a week and there could be heavy traffic in the downtown area at twelve o’clock midnight.
But those days are gone. The CN Tower rose as the highest single structure in the world in 1976 and high rises mushroomed in the downtown area as well as in the suburbs.
Arts and theatre have grown by leaps and bounds. The Toronto International Film Festival has brought world luminaries to this city.
Lately, Luminato has also graced theatres during the summer. Film companies from the United States have been coming to this city on location. Multicultural celebrations in the summer have grown as big fiestas that close portions of busy streets.
Then came the casino craze in Ontario. It started in Windsor but that was too far for Torontonians. There was the need for one closer. Casino Rama was only one and a half hours by car from Toronto. That was not enough; the Niagara Casino rose from the South; first a modest one and then a grandiose establishment with hotel and shopping areas: Falls view Casino.
It must have been a very profitable enterprise the way other places all around Toronto built their own gaming places: Brantford in the southwest, Flemingdon Downs close to Hamilton, Georgian Downs just before Barrie in the North; Ajax in the east, Blue Heron a little further east, the Kawarthas in the lake region.
Farther west is the Erie Slots. Not far from the 401 Highway on the Guelph Line was the Mohawk Slots. The closest and most popular to Torontonians is actually in Toronto, the Woodbine Slots.
Most of these casinos and slot places are available to Torontonians whether they have their own transportations or not. There are buses that will take anyone interested in going for free (if you have the gaming card) or for a little fee for newcomers.
In some cases you might even get a free lunch or dinner (or win a free hotel room for the night). if you are a frequent customer.
These buses are available in certain subway stations and malls, morning, noon and night.
Many organizations in the Greater Toronto Area have used casinos for group entertainment of their members.
A chartered bus takes the members to the casino where in each receives a little token amount of money or a meal.
The members stay in the casino for five hours and are then driven back.
Most of these members are senior citizens who indeed enjoy the trip. They are pensioners who put aside a certain amount of their incomes for this weekly trip to the casino.
I joined a group of seniors a few days ago on a casino trip. The bus was full to capacity with members of about sixty years of age to over ninety.
Some had canes; a few had walkers and most were robust but slow and careful in their steps.
They were a happy group chatting and joking as the bus wheeled its way to the casino. There was a game of Bingo which gave some cash prizes.
There were never ending chats about common topics like the aches and pains of growing old, what they can eat and can’t anymore, visits to different places and cruises they attended.
About an hour before home time, a group started to gather in the casino lounge. Most of them had no more money. “I lost thirty nine dollars”, one of them said. “I brought fifty with me and it grew to more than a hundred but I lost it again.”
Someone lost about four hundred dollars. “Hindi bale nagenjoy naman ako,” she laughed. “Hindi ko naman madadala sa libingan ang pera ko, kapag ako ay namatay.”
Most of the members of the group fell asleep in the bus on the way home. They were profuse in thanking the organizer when they got off the bus. “Kailan tayo babalik?” was their usual query as they said goodbye.
These are the senior groups that fill the casino during the daytime. They are minor players. They usually play in the one cent and two cents slots.
The high flyers are often in the casino in the evenings. They are business people and well-t-dos who do not have mortgages to worry about. They hold bunches of one hundred dollar bills which they continously feed into the one dollar to ten dollar slots.
Then there are the dreamers who forever hope to hit the jackpot. They are what we fall in our language “sugapa”. They borrow money and sell their homes and jewelry to have “puhunan”. They neglect their families and often had their homes broken.
Some of the casinos had started to suffer from competitions from newly opened ones. A few have already closed. Opening a new on in Toronto may be profitable in the beginning due to novelty but that will pass.
It will offer competition to the Woodbine Slots and that gaming place may decline. How about the addicted that might go straight to the casino on payday and lose the family ‘sustenance?
Where will the two hundred million dollars expected to be earned by a Toronto Casino come from? Think about it. ****