Gambolling

Ah spring! A time when lambs and calves gambol about the greening pastures, kicking their heels in the air, full of the joy of living. Even the old Nellie, the horse, perhaps aroused by the sun’s warming rays, will take a romp around the corral.

Children are skipping and playing with marbles, freed at last from heavy winter coats, boots and mittens. Hopscotch games are refreshed with coloured chalk and spring rhymes are sung as children hop about in the spirit of spring gambolling.

Skate board ramps reappear from under the melting snow and once more line our streets. And the Casino gambling problem arises once more like a phoenix at council.

City council is being asked to support a regional Charity Gaming initiative. It seems folk to the south and to the west of us want to get into the Casino business in the hopes of generating revenue for their municipalities and providing employment to some 300 people. In the past it was clear that we did not want a Casino in the City, but do we want to lend support to an outlying Casino when most of the spin-off benefits will accrue to North Bay in any case?

Council appears to have some members who are pro Charity Casino based on the business case and some members against it based on social issues. It is not an easy issue but it is one where fence sitting only works for so long. Or does it?

Council already supports gambling. The city collects revenue from licensing Lotteries, Nevadas and Bingos. If council believes these are socially harmless gaming activities, they should do one of their field trips to a lottery kiosk or to a bingo hall and observe the people earnestly gambling away their money. (For comparative purposes they could take the bus to Rama - all winnings would have to given to the City and applied to the proper revenue sub ledger account).

The social impact of gambling addiction will be discussed at length in committee. No one will deny that any addiction can lead to serious personal, family and social problems. Can council balance the social costs of having a Casino in our area with the revenue and job opportunities?

We seem to have arrived at a balance with selling alcohol in our city, accepting the high social costs of this addiction. If, out of the blue, LaBatt’s wanted to build a brewery in our fair city there wouldn’t be a second of hesitation in issuing a zoning change and building permits. Our councillors would be gambolling in the streets! Yet the social costs of drinking addiction are far higher than those of addictive gambling.

Gambling, gaming and risk-taking have been with us right from the time humans decided to chance encounters with a sabre-toothed tiger to get some food. Some early foragers even found some mushrooms that made them so happy they would readily take on said tiger to get another supply. We have advanced so far that now we are willing to gamble our dollars ( food supply) in VLTs in the faint hope of becoming wealthy, completely unaware that the tiger of addiction is lurking just around the corner.

Personally, I am not much of a Casino fan, especially when the atmosphere is all smoke and noise. What I would like to see is a major attraction in our area, and if it has to be a Charity Casino that anchors the project, so be it.

There are not a whole lot of new destination projects left for us in the north. Nashville has the Grand Old Opery – maybe we could start a Grand Cold Opery? Stratford and Niagara on the Lake have the theatre scene pretty well tied down, but Nipissing Stage might find a niche yet, perhaps in Canadianna. We need a large convention centre, but to draw conventions there has to be a major attraction, or a number of smaller attractions, to keep the visitors entertained while they are here.

Perhaps it is time to sit firmly, albeit uncomfortably, on the picket fence and simply not vote on a Charity Casino. Bury the question in Committee for a year (past councils found this an effective ploy). Let the Province run a referendum.

The chances of anyone getting approval for a Casino if the City is quiet on the Casino question is remote, but if they do, the City of North Bay will still reap some spin-offs as the regional economy improves.

After all, I am sure Orillia gets some economic benefit from the neighbouring Rama Casino. And as a former English Literature professor used to say, North Bay is little more than a modern-day Mariposa North.