GAMBLING IN CANADA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9696, 21 January 1910, Page 3

GAMBLING IN CANADA.

There is a strong movement in the eastern provinces for the suppression of gambling on racecourses. Replying to a representative d-pulainn who recently requested that the pracice should be brought under the Criminal Code, Sir Wilfrid Laurier promised that after the other side had been heard the matter would he considered by the Cabinet. Personally, he felt strongly in favour of the proposed reform on both social and economic grounds. A petition since drawn ud by temperance and moral reform societies for presentation to the Senate and House of Commons has been signed by a large number ot citizens. The document sets fcrth that, "whereas the Courts have interpreted the clauses of the Criminal Code bearing upon gambling and betting in such a way as to make lawful the negotiating of bets by bookmakers if done on the street?, or if done on race tracks, while they move about, but unlawful if they remain in any building or defined place, thus making the law absurd; and whereas the States of New York, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, California, and Washington, and many others, as well as Japan, have recently prohibited all such profession, professional gambling, leaving Canada almost alone in legalising this vice, and making her race tracks the rendezvous of gamblers and other social parasites, from all over the continent; and whereas our people are in consequence being publicly schooled in gambling and its attendant evils; therefore we, the undersigned electors, humbly pray your honourable body to enact without delay such amendments to the Criminal Code as will, under adequate penalties and by pimple process, make e pool sailing, bookmaking, and the business of gambling, clearly unlawful, everywhere and under all circumstances, as well as the publication of information tending to aid in gambling, and in other respects to render the law effective for the suppression of gambling."