At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969 (review)

Reviewed by: At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919–1969 Robert Wardhaugh (bio) Suzanne Morton. At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919–1969 University of Toronto Press. xi, 272. $60.00, $24.95 Gambling pervades Canada today. Lotteries, games of chance, sports-betting, and fund-raising enterprises are remarkably widespread. Gambling has undergone a transformation, notes Suzanne Morton in her new book, At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969, 'from a stigmatized minor vice to an acceptable activity regarded as appropriate and perhaps necessary to fund the Canadian welfare state.' Yet, gambling remains a contentious issue forCanadian society. Debates swirl around the social costs and responsibilities of addictive gambling, the question of municipal referendums on building casinos in communities, and the issues of locating [End Page 608] and controlling casinos on First Nations Reserves. But one of the most central and most ambivalent issues remains the role of government in regulating and, even more specifically, profiting from gambling. Provincial governments have come to rely so heavily on gambling revenues that officials will not even contemplate curtailing the industry. Instead, it is assumed that the revenue is so essential that there now cannot even be a debateabout the role of government. The focus, rather, is diverted towards using an insignificant amount of this revenue to offer token assistance to victims and addicts. This provocative, engaging, and well-researched book offers an interpretation of the history of gambling in Canada, from the end of the First World War to its legalization in1969.As Morton points out, times have certainly changed (or rather the level of ambivalence towards gambling has significantly increased). 'Until 1969,' Morton observes, 'virtually all forms of public gambling were illegal in Canada; only a generation ago, what we take for granted today was a source of public debate and moral ambivalence.' Legalization occurred under the peculiar circumstances of an omnibus reform bill that extensively revised the Criminal Code by liberalizing government policy on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, birth control, divorce, and gambling. By examining the changing reactions of Canadians to gambling and gambling legislation, Morton analyses and seeks to explain the shifting attitudes, what she views as a contrast of libertarian and moral relativism with pragmatic utilitarianism. Morton argues that attitudes towards gambling in fact reflected the 'big' issues of society, such as work, property, democracy, gender, religion, governance, and definitions of community. Indeed, she claims, 'the simple narrative description of this process belies the fact that cultural contradictions surround the entire process.' As a predominantly Protestant country in 1919, Canada shared the approach towards gambling with other Protestant societies, one that ambivalently blended unofficial toleration with official condemnation. At issue was not simply gambling but rather how it related to work, property, family, and faith. Its regulation exposed cultural contradictions about understandings and definitions of capitalism, gender roles, and community. Gambling could be considered positive and state-sanctioned or criminal, depending on the participants, their motivation, and where proceeds were going. The 'respectability' of gambling was situational, based on the class, race, and gender of the participants. But, over the course of the twentieth century, the construction of gambling as deviant behaviour became increasingly difficult to maintain with the decline of 'old Victorian Canada,' as represented by the Anglo-Celtic, Protestant middle class and its traditional institutions such as churches and patriarchal control: 'The secularization of charity and expanding expectations of the state opened the door for the rationalization [End Page 609] of government-operated gambling as the state assumed the traditional role of charitable fundraising.' Morton injects the 'simple narrative' with class, gender, and ethnic analysis. She correctly points out that social 'vices' have moral, spatial, and political dimensions. Gambling was viewed as a predominantly male activity, but women also gambled, and a gendered construction was built around the activity that reinforced patriarchal values. Morton also argues that the understanding of vice in Victorian Canada reflected Judaeo-Christian tenets, especially the dominant Protestant culture. Here, she is successful at placing the shifting attitudes and reactions within the structure of ethnic and cultural hegemony. The book is filled with wonderful analytical conclusions, but the reader is often left wanting more substantive discussions to sustain the conclusions . Whereas Morton provides...

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