Clotilde Berube is an addicted gambler who figures she has blown over $2 million at the Hull Casino and tens of thousands more at the OLG slots at Rideau Carleton Raceway. Once wealthy, she turned to gambling after her husband died about 15 years ago. Since then, she?s lost everything, including her home and her son. She signed up for the voluntary exclusion list at OLG facilities five years ago but, despite showing her ID at the Rideau Carleton Raceway, has been allowed back in. She recently lost another $800, and now she wants her money back.

Photograph by: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen

If there’s a story that casinos and other gaming houses don’t want you to hear, Clotilde Bérubé’s would come pretty close.
Her $10-million lawsuit against Loto-Québec and a recent dispute with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation should be enough to make any gambling operation squirm.
The sordid details of Bérubé’s gambling addiction and the $2 million-plus she wasted should make one wonder why governments are involved in such a dubious activity that is often portrayed as good, clean fun. Bérubé has an answer: “They need so much money, they don’t know what to do any more.” But, she says, gaming houses are hurting “sick” people like herself because they exploit their addiction.
Today, Bérubé, 62, lives in a downtown apartment, owned by Ottawa’s social-housing agency. It is hardly the lovely home in Sandy Hill where she lived with her late husband and two children.
As a young woman, Bérubé says she started out with little in her pockets. But over a 20-year period, she and her husband amassed a decent fortune by buying and renovating properties — mostly in Sandy Hill — and then flipping them for a tidy profit.
To get the $10,000 down payment on the first house they bought, they went to 10 friends who each lent them $1,000. Bérubé says she was very frugal. “I used to cut a penny in two.” The couple also held on to some houses as rental properties.
Bérubé was a Montrealer who studied Quebec civil law at the University of Ottawa during the 1970s. Bérubé practised in Hull for a few years. She married in 1980 and began working for the federal government, where her husband was also employed. Bérubé quit when she first became pregnant in the mid-1980s. With her real-estate savvy and desire to have a flexible work schedule as a mother, Bérubé became a real-estate agent. She says she made big commissions.
But her world came crashing down in 1996 when her husband committed suicide. Bérubé fell deep into depression. What helped her get out of it, for awhile, was the Casino du Lac Leamy in Gatineau. She had seen the ads, and decided it couldn’t be a bad thing if it was government-run.
She liked it immediately and received the VIP treatment. “As soon as I got there, I was a different person. I wasn’t crying. Even my kids were happy when I went gambling.”
She would gamble afternoons, while maintaining her job in real estate. But “I slowly stopped working.”
Bérubé would get to the casino at 11 a.m. and stay until midnight, though she says she made sure her kids were being cared for while she gambled. She remembers being plied with booze and playing the games in a drunken haze. Bérubé says she once went to the casino with $100,000 stuffed in her purse. She says she would spend as much as $10,000 on one game.
Though she often wanted to kill herself for the shame she felt afterward, she kept going, because “the only thing you think about is gambling, gambling, gambling.”
Bérubé began selling her rental properties. There were foreclosures on other mortgages, which she says were the result of her bank finding out she had a severe gambling problem. She also lost her house on Wilbrod.
Bérubé moved into a one-bedroom apartment and arranged to have her son live with a friend because she was having a hard time coping. She says she gets along well with her daughter, who is 23, but says her son, 25, will have nothing to do with her.
Bérubé says she admitted herself to the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre for her addiction. Before launching her lawsuit in 2007, she complained to Loto-Québec and was told to stay away from the casino. Bérubé was involved in a few other legal battles with the Quebec government over its gambling operations, but none was successful.
Her latest fight is with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission (OLGC) over $800 she lost playing video poker at the OLG Slots at Rideau Carleton in January.
Bérubé started going there five years ago. She says she dropped $10,000-$15,000 during six visits before she signed a help program called self-exclusion in which the gambler agrees to be banned for six months, a year or an indefinite period. The gambler is photographed. Breaches result in ejections or trespassing fines.
Bérubé says it didn’t take her long to breach the agreement. She says she went to Rideau Carleton on five or six occasions, was not detected, and blew another $10,000. She took the OLGC to small-claims court to try to recover her money. “If (self-exclusion) doesn’t work, then they shouldn’t have it,” says Bérubé. But her claim was dismissed after she failed to appear at the hearing, which, she says, she was never notified about.
Bérubé says she’s been back another half-dozen times since and was caught twice. During her last visit when she lost the $800, was says she was asked for identification, but the connection wasn’t made. She told management that she wanted the $800 back because of the security failure. She was kicked out.
Paul Pellizzari, OLGC’s director of policy and social responsibility, says self-exclusion is a “voluntary self-help tool.” Breaches are the responsibility of the gambler.
A $3.5-million class-action lawsuit representing more than 10,000 addicted gamblers was launched against the lottery corporation for the same reason. OLGC is alleged to have failed to exercise its duty to prevent people from continuing to gamble after signing the forms. A judge ruled that class action is not the proper way to proceed as the personal circumstances of each gambler are different. He suggested individual lawsuits instead. The ruling is under appeal.
Pellizzari says facial recognition technology could be in place at all OLG facilities soon. Cameras would catch patrons as they come into a facility. Their video images would then be automatically compared to photographs of banned gamblers.
There are about 15,000 gamblers who are on OLGC’s self-exclusion list.

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