Photo by Drew Rae: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-playing-poker-1871508/
Did you know that Canada was one of the gambling industry’s biggest markets? It’s true. In 2021, the country’s gambling market was worth a staggering $12.5 billion US dollars, which is no loose change.
While that figure might come as a surprise, if you take a look at Canada’s long history with gambling, then it’ll be a little easier to understand. Canadians have been gambling for centuries and centuries, making the activity as Canadian as ice hockey. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at everything you need to know about Canada’s relationship with gambling, past, present, and future.
Earliest Forms of Gambling in Canada
You have to go a long way back to find the first recorded instance of gambling. Studies suggest that the First Nations people would gamble using dice and sticks. They’d often gamble for leisure purposes, but sometimes they’d gamble to settle disputes. So yes, while it’s true that the details of what gambling looked like would be vastly different from what we consider gambling to be today, it’s fair to say that gambling has had a presence in the country for a long, long time.
The Rise of Modern Gambling
It was the arrival of the Europeans in Canada that brought what we consider “traditional gambling to the country.” Arriving from Europe, the freshly arrived Europeans brought with them card and dice games, and it wasn’t long before gambling houses were established. These early incarnations of casinos were little more than taverns that permitted card games, but still, they helped to establish the culture of gambling in the country.
Gambling: Banned for Nearly 100 Years
While the masses may have enjoyed gambling, it wasn’t universally beloved throughout Canada. One group of people that didn’t like gambling were, unfortunately, the ones who had the power to do something about it: the government. In 1892, the then-government banned gambling for moral and religious reasons. However, though the legislature did curb the momentum of the blossoming casino scene, it didn’t quell it completely. An underground network of taverns and gambling houses popped up, where gamblers could play cards and dice far from the eyes of the law.
It wasn’t until 1985 when the ban on gambling was lifted, at which point the country’s love affair with gambling could really take off.
Photo by Jonathan Petersson: https://www.pexels.com/photo/closeup-photo-of-two-red-dices-showing-4-and-5-965875/
Gambling in Canada Today
As we’ve seen, gambling has been popular in Canada for centuries, and there’s no sign of things changing anytime soon. Today, around 60% of Canadians say they partake in some form of gambling, with the average Canadian spending just less than $7 a month on the pastime. Of course, modern-day gambling is different to what it was in the past. For one thing, the activity largely takes place online. There’s a wide range of online casino games in Canadaavailable, which means that people don’t necessarily need to visit a brick-and-mortar casino to play their favourite games.
The Future of Gambling in Canada
So gambling may be popular in Canada today, but is it going to stay that one? And if it does remain popular, what will it look like in the future? The popularity of gambling in Canada has been growing year-on-year, and with new technologies continually helping to make gambling a more immersive experience, it looks like it’ll continue to grow in popularity in the coming years. Some key developments that are expected in the coming years include virtual realityand metaverse gambling, with VR gambling of particular interest. And with new laws ensuring that Canada’s gambling market is fully open, we can expect the country to have some of the most forward-thinking gambling experiences in the world.
