Casinos are fascinating places.  In Las Vegas, the Strip and the old downtown are a visual delight of glitz & glamor.  Every fountain, every tower, every plaza (indoors and out) is a place to stare and dream.  But that amazement is not at the casino next to the shopping mall in downtown Fort McMurray. 

I am told that local charities take turns running things at this Fort McMurray casino in exchange for funds—improbable as that sounds.  Outside the casino are scores of last nations people: skinny, wrinkled-faced, bowed shoulders hunched over a last-seeming cigarette.  Inside the slot machine scene is as sad as any Las Vegas casino, with fat ladies chained to machines that eat coins and colored paper for an occasional spit-out of promised riches.  This, as everywhere, is a field of blank, bamboozled faces and mechanical arms.  I fled across the snow and sand drenched parking lot to the lighter side of life that Blockbuster represents. 

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