Casino would benefit boring old Hamilton

Recently I watched a fellow go into the casino at Flamboro Downs. Nobody was holding a gun to his head. He went in with a smile on his face and when he left a while later he was still smiling. I am not a psychologist but when a person is smiling and seems to be carefree, he also appears to be comfortable with himself and his ilk. Folks need to get a grip. Nobody is forced to enter a casino and gamble. We do it on our own accord. A casino downtown would bring in people and tourists from all over. Downtown needs a boost. Amazingly, we blew it over the Pan Am velodrome, the new stadium and who knows what else. Put the casino over on Tiffany Street on the Rheem lands. Expropriating all those homes was a poorly thought-out plan. All you see there now is a big empty area just waiting for a casino. It could be built there without bothering any of the casino haters who don’t want it in their backyards. Another thing that bothers me is the idea to regulate the hours the casino is open, the plan to remove the ATMs from the gaming floor and to limit the sale of alcohol. We are adults with the amazing ability to think for ourselves. We don’t need Big Brother guiding our lives and our futures for us. We have a chance to move out of the boonies and grab on to a future in which possibly people from Toronto, Montreal, or even Buffalo, N.Y., will come and visit us for pleasure and fun instead of making fun of boring old Hamilton and passing by on the highways that encircle us. Think toward the future. Never mind our pathetic past.

W.G. HORSFALL, HAMILTON