Games of chance have been around for a long time; so long, in fact, that some Canadian archaeologists and historians believe that humans have been gambling for some thousands of years or more. Although we aren’t sure exactly where—or how—gambling first came about, many experts believe that gambling is an activity that has been enjoyed, in one form or another, by nearly every known society in history, from the first recorded instance of gambling in ancient China around 2300 BC, all the way to mentions of betting and gambling throughout the legends of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in stories of Elizabethan England and Napoleonic France.
Casino gambling, however, at least as we know it in Canadian society today, is much younger than gambling itself, and casinos in their most basic forms only emerged with in the last few hundred years, although they weren’t actually called “casinos” until much later. The first known casino establishment, the Ridotto, was erected in seventeenth century Venice, Italy, known as a “gambling house,” and was intended to provide a regulated environment for betting during the carnival season. The Ridotto shut its doors a few years later, when Venetians claimed it created “destitution” among the city’s citizens.
Other early incarnations of today’s casinos were early Canadian and American “saloons.” Similar to casinos we know and love today, saloons were meeting places as well as gambling establishments, and were important meeting places for travelers who were looking for people to talk, drink, and gamble with.