In my family, the gambling gene skipped a generation. My mother loved nothing more than a night out at the bingo hall. With a dabber in each hand and two-dozen newsprint bingo cards laid out in front of her, she displayed the reflexes of an F-35 fighter pilot, the precision of a sniper.
In the long run, I'm certain that she spent more than she ever won. But for her it was entertainment, shouting "Bingo!" a minor thrill.
My almost-seven-year-old son is a whiz at Yam Slam. He flips the plastic chips across the table like a Vegas veteran.
Me, I have no desire to gamble. I will occasionally buy a lottery ticket when the jackpot reaches some ridiculous amount. I'm not good at card games. I handle dice clumsily. There are a thousand places in the world I would rather see before Las Vegas.
In fact until this week, I had been inside a casino once in my life. And that was in Ontario.
But with the debate over the proposed downtown casino in front of Vancouver City Council, and public hearings continuing next week, I decided it was a good time finally to pay a visit to a casino in B.C.
The River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond happens to be the largest casino in the province, and is part of a larger (and still expanding) complex that includes a hotel and a show theatre. (Oh, look: Credence Clearwater Revisited featuring the original CCR rhythm section is playing this month.) It seemed like a good comparison to the proposed downtown complex. I called a friend who has a soft spot for roulette and asked him to come along.
The room was brighter than I expected, with timber beams and a distinctly British Columbia feel.
Our first stop was the ATM. Heeding the BCLC's advice (which was printed on a small plastic sign at the guest services desk), I vowed to "know my limit and play within it." I decided my limit would be $50. The ATM however distributed cash in only $100 increments, and only as $100 bills. The service charge for the transaction was $2.75, not including the fees my own bank would charge. I was already losing.
The place wasn't packed, but it appeared to be doing well for a weeknight.
Groups of men and women, roughly equally represented, were huddled around the games. In some cases, the conversations were animated; there was jostling and laughter.
It took me about 10 minutes at a slot machine to lose the first $10. After almost every turn, the screen flashed, the music pounded and the bells rang signalling I had surely won something. But each time my account balance dropped until finally nothing was left.
Another machine digested $20 in even less time.
My friend took his $100 bill to the roulette wheel and bet heavily on a single number that had been lucky for him in the past. Fifteen minutes later the entire $100 was gone. The high point of the game, he later confessed, was when he had $103 in chips in front of him.
I put down $20 at the same wheel. It was gone in three spins.
Was it fun? Not really. Would I go back? Probably not.
But it didn't feel evil.
I found no cobwebbed elderly people sitting in urine-soaked adult diapers. I detected no desperation in the faces of people at the tables. No one appeared to be gambling the rent. In fact, it looked like everyone was having a pretty good time.
I know - the evil that lurks in casinos isn't always visible to the naked eye. The sobs of the desperate are drowned out by the house band playing Fleetwood Mac covers. Organized criminals are expert at blending in.
And there is no way to tally what all of the money would have been spent on had it not been stuffed into greedy machines.
Would it have been spent on other entertainment? A live band, a theatre ticket, or dinner and a movie?
Maybe groceries or a babysitter. Any of those things would have lasted longer.
After my little field trip, I am still undecided about whether a casino downtown is good or bad for the city. But I did learn this: Casino gambling is an awfully efficient way for government to suck money out of citizens.
And I also learned that some people seem not to mind.
Stephen Quinn is host of On the Coast on CBC Radio One, 88.1 FM in Vancouver. stephen.quinn@cbc.ca