Casino Chip of the Day

I didn't scout the place enough to figure out the "AP" opportunities on spending the credits. My wife and I each had $10 worth, and that got us dinner in the food court. That's all we needed and all we had time for on that visit. Had to get back on the road.

Category: Canada
City: Moncton, New Brunswick
Casino: Casino New Brunswick

There are a couple of different directions I could have turned this thread as we head to areas outside of the United States, but I decided that I would address the Canadian casinos next. In a different thread, I recently made a post about a planned-but-not-yet-scheduled trip that would add several Canadian chips to my collection, though for now I have a very limited set.

Limited as it is, the set presents several of those "How should I alphabetize it?" issues. Some of the casino names just don't seem to work right unless I include the leading "Casino" as part of the name, and today's chip comes from one of those.

New Brunswick is one of Canada's maritime provinces and has an extensive border with the state of Maine. It is named for the English/French transcription of the city of Brunswick (Braunschweig in German) in northern Germany. The province shares its name with the small city in New Jersey where I was born. According to Wikipedia, Greater Moncton is the province's largest Census Metropolitan Area and fastest growing city, but it is neither the capital (Fredericton) nor the most populous city (Saint John).

My wife and I have visited New Brunswick twice, in August 2006 and September 2010, with both trips continuing to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Since I'm mentioning our vacation trips that included chip collecting, I'm once again going to exercise my right to bore you with a couple of my travel photographs.

New Brunswick offers several examples of extremes, and one is a bit of an oddity that I took a detour to photograph. You know from some of my previous photo posts that I like bridges, and this one shows the Hartland Bridge. Located at the town of Hartland, it crosses the Saint John River, and at 1,282 feet long it is acclaimed as the "World's Longest Covered Bridge."


Another example of a world extreme found in New Brunswick is the tidal fluctuation in the Bay of Fundy. In the city of Saint John (Does anyone else have trouble remembering which Atlantic Provinces city is Saint John and which is St. John's?), they even have a Reversing Waterfall. That's right; at high tide the "downstream" water level is so high that the water is flowing backward, up the falls.

OK, that's really a bit of a promotional exaggeration. What is true is that there is a narrows with a whitewater rapids, less than what I would call a serious waterfall, but there is a definite drop off at the end, at least most of the time. At high tide the harbor level is higher than the water level in the river, and water reverses flow through the narrows, dropping to the "upper" side of the falls. I have some photos of that at both low and high tides, but I don't think I'll bother posting them. If you'd like to see a waterfall flow backward, you should visit Saint John yourself! (It's a sight better seen in motion anyway.)

Instead, I'm posting a photo of the eroded rocks at The Rocks Provincial Park, near Hopewell Cape. The empty beach is fine for walking/exploring at low tide, but when the alarm sounds, you'd better get your butt back up the stairway in a jiffy before the tide catches you. They call these rocks the "Flowerpot Rocks" because of the shape that some have taken under erosion. This park is located about 30 miles (49 km) from the Casino New Brunswick.



Enough with the travelogue snapshots, I guess….

By the time of our second visit to the area, the province's only casino had been open for about four months, and I stopped in to play blackjack for a while. They do offer craps, but when I dropped in mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, the table was not staffed. I managed to lose $25 CA while collecting my souvenir. Since the currencies are so nearly at parity today ($1 CA = $0.99 US according to my Adroid app), I don't think I'll bother making such a distinction as I post the remainder of my Canadian chips.

The MOGH catalog shows $1, $5, and two versions of $0.50 chips for this casino. The fractional ones are plain chips in light blue and beige, hot-stamped in gold. The "larger" denomination chips are similar to each other except for color and the denomination mark on the center inlay. I do not remember what all denominations were in play when I visited.

The chip shown below is a very plain, white plastic chip with a smooth outer ring surface, a thin green ring around the center inlay, and three pair of green edge inserts. I am not certain of the manufacturer of this chip, and I have that problem with several of my Canadian chips. This one looks similar to the Gemaco pattern 139.25.13.00, except there are several discrepancies:
(1) The Gemaco catalog I have does not indicate that the green center ring is something that they offer, though they might,
(2) The chip's edge inserts have sharp corners as opposed to the smooth curves shown in the Gemaco catalog, and
(3) The catalog suggests there should be some additional edge markings that are not present on the chip.

That strikes me as too many discrepancies for me to declare the manufacturer based on my examination, and the MOGH catalog does not list any source.

I found this article from 2010 that says:

Quote:

U.K.-based TCS John Huxley has supplied the new Casino New Brunswick in Canada with a range of gaming tables and displays, chips, seating and assorted accessories.

I do not know much about TCS John Huxley (and could use some help from others), but they are a supplier of a wide range of casino equipment. My impression is that they are both a chip manufacturer and a re-seller/distributor of chips made by others. That complicates the identification of a source for today's chip.

The Huxley web site indicates that they sell chips manufactured both by Icon and by Matsui. I also found a discussion thread at thechipboard.com that claims that Huxley owns Dolphin Products, an Australian manufacturer of chips whose products Huxley previously distributed. However, the Dolphin web site claims that they are a subsidiary of Elixir Gaming Technologies, and I haven't tried to track down the entire corporate ownership structure.

In any case, I have not been able to match the design of this chip to any images found on the Huxley, Matsui, Icon, or Dolphin sites. This dead end proves once again that I cannot compete with pacomartin when it comes to gathering esoteric/essential data.



Edit 4/15/13: I'm a little slow with this, but I finally did find this design in a Matsui catalog I downloaded from their site. I believe it is their pattern CC.610-C. Based on that article I quoted above, I assume that Casino New Brunswick purchased Matsui chips from TCS John Huxley.

Quote: Ayecarumba

What is the, "most" of something you could get for the $10 minimum? Could you get 18 pancakes, or 20 packs of gum...??

You could get 4 20 ounce sodas and a candy bar at the hotel gift shop for about $11. That's in the lobby of the Radisson, which is a pretty long walk from the casino floor. That's probably the closest to fair-retail that you could get with the $10 gift card. You also could get a couple slices of pizza (or a stromboli) and a fountain soda from the italian food spot in the food court for just under $12. That's probably the closest thing to a full meal that you could get with the $10.

Points do accrue in the casino at a relatively high rate. The points are really only good for food (and gift shop) purchases - there's no cash conversion option - so the accrual rate may be intentionally high to subsidize the elevated food cost.

BTW, I'm really hoping that some of our Canadian members are following this thread and will contribute both images of their chips and info about the casinos and the provinces. I've only been into the country something just short of a dozen times ever, so I have an abundance of ignorance that I need someone to help overcome. I'm not much better than John Candy's character in Canadian Bacon.

As for the $10 entry fee/reimbursement, any logical reason why is that required at Valley Forge versus other PA casinos, or is it statewide and the other casinos offer a better reimbursement that it wasn't mentioned?

Quote: tringlomane

As for the $10 entry fee/reimbursement, any logical reason why is that required at Valley Forge versus other PA casinos, or is it statewide and the other casinos offer a better reimbursement that it wasn't mentioned?

Logical? Oh, HELL no! It's something only a state legislature could come up with:-) Two of PA's gaming licenses are designed for smaller properties where gaming is not a primary focus. The one in Valley Forge went to the Valley Forge Convention Center. It's a big hotel (or two, depending on how you look at it), with a lot of convention space. And now it happens to also have a relatively small casino on-site. The idea is that hotel visitors and convention goers will spend extra money in the casino - and both of those classes of people get in for free.

But, a gaming facility can't be private. So there has to be a mechanism to let the public in. So there's a cover charge for access. And, of course, as the operator, the good folks at Valley Forge want to let as much of the public in as possible. So they've designed this system where you pay $10 to enter the casino, and receive a free $10 gift card for your troubles (or, alternatively, spend $10 on-site and get a free admission. It depends on where/how the $10 changes hands). The idea is that this incredibly odd system circumvents the rule requiring a cover charge by discounting something else by an equal amount.

I'd have to dig to find the regulation, and I might not be able even if I tried.

This casino has one of the "Category 3" licenses, which were intended for resorts that are not primarily gaming facilities. I suppose the folks in PA were thinking about places equivalent to the Greenbrier in West Virginia -- a high-end resort that just offers a moderate/small casino as an extra amenity for its guests, not for gambling by every Joe Blow that drives down the street. There is a limit on the number of machines and the number of tables that they are allowed to operate. I don't know all the details, but you could be a guest in the hotel at Valley Forge and play there, or you could purchase a membership to their club/association/whatever -- they are offered on an annual or a 90-day basis. I think either of those approaches would fit in well with the original concept.

This concept got stretched a bit in the implementation.

Now if they ever open the Lady Luck Casino at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort out in Farmington, I suspect it will operate very much the way that Greenbrier does. However, there is a lawsuit challenging that license, too. I don't know the status of the case, but I don't think they are doing any work yet to modify the facility to include the casino.

Quote: Doc

There is a limit on the number of machines and the number of tables that they are allowed to operate.

And to the number of people who can be on the floor. That part gets a little weird on the bigger drawing nights, when they've had to move the drawings out to the foodcourt so that the winner isn't denied access to the place that they're supposed to report to claim their prize.

Thanks guys; it makes a lot more sense now.

Not to me, it doesn't.     :-)

Category: Canada
City: Niagara Falls, Ontario
Casino: Casino Niagara

Hmmm…. Not much interest in my first posting of a Canadian chip. Let's see whether one from the honeymoon capital draws any more response.

My understanding is that the plan was to build a temporary casino in Niagara Falls to get the business underway while they constructed the permanent casino, hotel, and entertainment complex. The temporary facility opened in December 1996, located close to the Rainbow Bridge to New York (posted my photo of that bridge way back here), while the permanent facility was destined to be much closer to the falls.

The venture was so successful that when the new casino opened in 2004, the "temporary" casino did not close. That place is still operating under the name Casino Niagara.

The casino's web site says they have over 1,500 slots and VP machines in denominations from pennies to $5, 40 table games, and a 12-table poker room. The table games include blackjack, craps, roulette, Big Six, BlackJack Switch, Caribbean Stud, Casino War, Four Card Poker, Let-it-Ride, Spanish 21, and Three Card Poker.

The first time I took my family to Niagara Falls was 1995, before the casino opened. I know that my wife and I visited again in August 2004, but I think we were there at least once between those two years. I didn't keep a searchable digital calendar until 1998 and didn't record my vacation travels very well for some years after that; I haven't dug out the old paper calendar books to check the earlier years at all. We made return visits in June 2007 and May 2008.

In any case, I had not started actively collecting chips until the fall of 2003, so I am sure I got my Casino Niagara chip in 2004, as well as one from the "permanent" casino that had opened by then. I do not have a record of what game I played at Casino Niagara or the outcome, and I really don't remember. I suspect it was craps.

At least today, unlike yesterday, there is no uncertainty as to the manufacturer of the subject chip. This is a gray RHC Paulson chip – the MOGH catalog calls it "white", but I just can't see that. I admit that it actually is a good bit lighter than the gray Paulson chip from Aliante Station that was the first chip I posted in this thread and which elicited the comment:

Quote: zippyboy

Holy cow....that's a filthy chip!! It should be bright white!

This chip has six hot pink (maybe red) edge inserts arranged as three pair. The center inlay is slightly undersized, green, with gold lettering for the name, city, province, and denomination. There are two diamonds as text separators in a color that reasonably well matches the edge inserts.

Behind the denomination mark, there is a drawing of Horseshoe Falls, with the state of New York on the left and the province of Ontario on the right. I recommend that you not try crossing the border right at this point unless your name is Wallenda. Even in that case, I don't really endorse it. UV light reveals the hidden Paulson logo and the fluorescence of the edge inserts.



O.K., since you asked so nicely, I'll add another of my travel photos. I took this one in 2008 from the deck near the top of the Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls, and it shows the same Horseshoe Falls as depicted on the chip. We have a 16"x24" print of this photo matted, framed (~20x28), and hanging in our living room. Yes, I am so cheap that I have the place decorated with a zillion of my own photos. Most of them in smaller sizes though.



Edit 4/17/13: I was slow to realize it, but it was brought to my attention by rdw4potus that the chip I have been considering my "Niagara Fallsview Casino" chip also shows the Casino Niagara label on the other side. Here is the image of that side of the chip. More about the chip with my Niagara Fallsview post.

Here's my Casino Niagara chip. This was the first Canadian casino that I visited on my trek across Ontario last Spring. I thought the area was difficult to navigate through and park in, but I was impressed with the casinos. Other than the gambling and the obligatory falls gazing, I didn't take much time to be a tourist. Hopefully my fiancee will return with me some day.

It was 70 and sunny when I was in Niagara Falls, and by the time I reached Brantford (75 miles away) it was barely 40 and pouring sleet with gale-force winds. Those were may be the worst conditions I've ever attempted to drive in, but I did reach the Brantford OLG and neighboring Comfort Inn before deciding to drive no farther until the next morning.

Yesterday's chip made me realize how bad my cabin fever is: I discovered that it's "only" a 13 hour drive from my house to Moncton, and then I started considering that as a weekend trip.

Quote: Doc

Yes, I am so cheap that I have the place decorated with a zillion of my own photos. Most of them in smaller sizes though.

Cheap? I don't know about that. But in good taste? Certainly.

Quote: rdw4potus

Yesterday's chip made me realize how bad my cabin fever is

Quote: from "Boat Drinks" by Jimmy Buffet

Boys in the band ordered boat drinks
Visitors scored on the home rink
Everything seems to be wrong

Lately newspapers mentioned cheap airfare
I gotta fly to St. Somewhere
I'm close to bodily harm

20 degrees and the hockey game's on
Nobody cares, they're way too far gone, screaming
Boat drinks, something to keep 'em all warm

This morning I shot six holes in my freezer
I think I've got cabin fever
Somebody sound the alarm

Glad I don't live in snow country.

I understand the falls are eroding, and moving backwards a fair number of feet (meters) each year. Will they eventually all be in Canada, or will the border, "move" to keep up with the changing geography of the landmark?

Yes, the falls are receding and have been for a long time, but the rate has been quite varied. The creation of the whirlpool, a bit over three miles downstream of the present location of the falls, was a dramatic event with major destruction, lasting just a matter of weeks or days. Then, it took 18,000 years for the falls to recede those three miles to its current position.

Movement has slowed even more in the recent past when the flow over the falls has been significantly diverted through the power-generation equipment. In the photo I posted of the Horseshoe Falls, you can see the diversion channel above the falls and to the right of the vapor cloud. It is diverting a portion of the river to the generating plant on the Canadian side. There is a similar diversion of a portion of the branch of the river that flows over the American Falls.

Here is some info from the NiagaraParks.com web site :

Quote:

The falls will continue to erode, however, the rate has been greatly reduced due to flow control and diversion for hydro-power generation. Recession for at least the last 560 years has been estimated at 1 to 1.5 metres per year. Its current rate of erosion is estimated at 1 foot per year and could possibly be reduced to 1 foot per 10 years. The current rate of recession is unclear; assessing its value remains the responsibility of the International Joint Commission. The International Boundary Waters Treaty stipulates the minimum amount of flow over the falls during daytime, nighttime and the tourist season.

Since it may only be moving roughly an inch a year, I don't think anyone is particularly worried about what the effect is on the border. I don't even know how the border is defined -- a particular line or a particular position in the river, e.g., the middle, or something else that moves over time.

Category: Canada
City: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Casino: Casino Nova Scotia - Halifax

Today's Casino Chip of the Day leads discussion to the second of Canada's three Maritime provinces. They are known by that name because of their extensive seacoasts and their accompanying extensive history of naval commerce. Nova Scotia (New Scotland) is a peninsula that is almost an island, connected to New Brunswick at the eastern end of the Bay of Fundy, not far from The Rocks Provincial Park that I showed a couple of days ago.

There are common references to the upper and lower peninsulas of Nova Scotia, even though the "upper peninsula" really is an island – Cape Breton Island – which is separated from the peninsula by the narrow Strait of Canso. In fact, the island consist of a collection of land masses that are barely connected to each other, looking much like an ice floe that is breaking apart.

Halifax is the capital of the province. There was a City of Halifax surrounded by 200 independently managed communities until 1996, when the province merged the entire county as Halifax Regional Municipality. From the non-governmental tourists' perspective, there are still a lot of separate and lovely little communities. My wife and I visited Halifax in both 2006 and 2010, staying in different locations in smaller communities.

The central city is on a significant commercial harbor, and a section of that waterfront is a very nice tourism center. There is a wonderful Maritime Museum of the Atlantic that includes exhibits of commercial sailing history in the region, as well as flotsam associated with the nearby sinking of the Titanic and the rescue of what survivors there were. Connected by pedestrian walkway from there are piers, restaurants, shops, and even a casino – one of two establishments of the Casino Nova Scotia.

The casino first opened in June 1995. The Wikipedia article refers to the original facility as a temporary location associated with a Sheraton Hotel, as if the "temporary" aspect was planned. The MOGH catalog has notes saying that "After a disastrous original run of things, it was moved…." I have no idea how those changes were planned and viewed at the time. To add to the confusion, MOGH says the casino started as a joint effort of the provincial government and Sheraton Resorts, while Wiki says it was originally owned by Caesars, being sold to the The Great Canadian Gaming Corporation in 2005. I didn't search further to try to learn the ownership history.

I played in the Casino Nova Scotia – Halifax on both visits to the city. I got my souvenir chip in 2006 but did not record or remember my specific gaming experience. In 2010, I played craps and ended my session up by $80. There was one guy at the table then who kept making horn bets. Another player, who was openly a novice, asked the dealers what a horn bet was, and they explained it to him. I quipped that I had recently heard the horn bet described as an extremely convenient way to place four very bad wagers all at the same time. The box man thought that was hilarious, and I could see the idea running through his mind as to whether he would be allowed to repeat it in the future as an explanation of the bet.

The chip shown below is a white Bud Jones plastic injection molded chip with four red dashes in the outer band and a silver coin center inlay. There are eight red dashes on the edge of the chip (not visible here) aligned with the centers of the face dashes and with the spaces between them. The coin inlay has blue print for the casino name and black print for the city, province, denomination mark, BJ logo, and the sailing ship emblem of the casino.

I think this is the first coin-inlay chip that I have posted that has any colors at all for the print, and it even has multi-colors. I think the chip from the Colorado Belle in Laughlin was the only other coin-inlay one so far with a graphic logo. Even though the plastic portion of this chip is rather plain, I am very impressed with the inlay.



Yesterday, in response to rdw4potus's comment about his cabin fever, I said I was glad that I don't live in snow country. I think I would have extreme difficulty dealing with Canadian winters. On the other hand, there are places in Canada that are absolutely beautiful to my eye in the summer, when I can even consider visiting for a while. To me, this beauty justifies my continuing to append some of my travel photos to these posts about casino chips. Hope you can tolerate one more.

In the vicinity of Halifax, there are a number of truly gorgeous coves on the Atlantic coast. My wife and I stayed in a lovely B&B on Hacketts Cove, and the epitome of tourist attraction sites in the area is Peggy's Cove. I have two photos of that little community hanging on the walls of our condo. One shows the lovely white lighthouse standing on the rocky point. I believe it now houses a post office.

The other is the one of fishing vessels and their small harbor area as presented below. I have read that this scene is the most photographed spot in all of Nova Scotia. In fact, if you go to the Wikipedia pages for The Maritimes or Peggy's Cove, you can see photos of these same buildings and these same boats. You will also see a photo of the lighthouse, which is located just over that hill to the left.

Can you blame the tourists (like my wife and me) for all wanting to take this memory home with them?

That's a beauty, Doc.... and the picture of Peggy's Cove is nice too... Please keep posting your photos.

Was the chip design the same in 2010 when you went back?

Yes, the chips were the same on both visits.

I looked at the MOGH catalog page again and pulled out a little more info. This may not be completely correct, but it may go something like this: When the "temporary" place opened in 1995, it was known as Sheraton Casino. That place closed and reopened in the new location in 2000 under the name Casino Nova Scotia. The Sheraton Casino chips looked quite similar on the perimeter but the center inlay, as shown on the MOGH catalog, appears to be plain white with black lettering rather than having the silver coin. The casinos under the two names also used chips in denominations of $2.50, $5, and $25 that differed only by the center inlays. The catalog shows a $100 chip only for the later casino, and a completely different design from Chipco for a Sheraton Casino commemorative Grand Opening $5 chip.

In my original post, I should have mentioned something about the unusual building structure. I couldn't remember/describe it well enough myself, but this is what the Wiki article has to say:

Quote:

Engineered by BMR of Halifax, the casino has been described as one of the most complicated in the company's history. The size of the site meant that part of the building was built over water 70 feet deep (at its deepest point). Most of the land that the casino occupies had been created years earlier when that part of Halifax Harbour was infilled with loose rock and excavation material from other construction sites — reclaimed land was too soft to serve as a stable building foundation. BMR overcame the problem by engineering a design which incorporated driving caissons through the fill material and into the bedrock below. Then, using a specially designed doughnut-shaped pile cap as a support system, the engineers worked with the form work contractor to hang the casino’s floor structure on the supporting caissons like a huge wharf.

Sorry, my travel photography didn't include the building foundation and construction details. I'm nerdy, but ....

It is a pet peeve of mine that the official French Canadian name of Nova Scotia is "Nouvelle Ecosse." I understand that means "New Scotland," but is that really a proper translation of Nova Scotia? Scotia is an old-fashioned way of saying Scotland, so I get it, but I'm still peeved. Why does it need a French name anyway?

Quote: teddys

It is a pet peeve of mine that the official French Canadian name of Nova Scotia is "Nouvelle Ecosse." I understand that means "New Scotland," but is that really a proper translation of Nova Scotia?

Yes and no.

Nova Scotia is actually Latin for "New Ireland" (!) The Romans referred to tribes from the island we call Ireland today as "Scoti" for some reason. Later on the name got applied to Scotland. So assuming the latter is the proper term, then "Nova Scotia" is Latin for "New Scotland."

Category: Canada
City: Sydney, Nova Scotia
Casino: Casino Nova Scotia - Sydney

Sydney is located on Cape Breton Island, almost at the extreme eastern end of Nova Scotia. My wife and I didn't make it to that area during our visit to the province in 2006, but we made a point of getting there when we returned in 2010. The tourist attractions of that district seem to be based less on activities and entertainment and more on watching and communing with nature. They do have a living history center that we had in mind to see.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't very accommodating for our visit. I don't think it stopped raining the entire time we were on the island. In protest, we did almost nothing while we were there – sat around the motel for an entire day, took naps, and did our laundry. We went out to dinner at a fairly nice restaurant one evening, stopped by the casino, and left the next morning without having seen much or having taken any photos at all.

In spite of the minor conflicts I reported yesterday between the info available from Wikipedia and from the MOGH catalog, both sources indicate that the Sheraton Casino opened an affiliated casino in Sydney in 1995, perhaps just two months after opening in Halifax. Neither of those resources indicates when the Sydney edition was renamed Casino Nova Scotia, but I suspect that it was in 2000, or at least at the same time that the Halifax facility changed its name.

The Sydney casino was smaller than the one in Halifax, though it must have expanded since I was there in 2010. Their web site says they have eight poker tables, two Let it Ride tables, one Mississippi Stud table, one Texas Held'em Bonus table, three roulette tables (two double-zero and one single-zero), three Baccarat tables (one EZBac, one Midi Baccarat, and one Mini Baccarat), one Blackjack Switch table, and twelve blackjack tables, with Mini Craps available on weekend nights. Surprisingly, the web site even lists the betting min and max for most table types.

When I was there, I think there were only half a dozen or so tables total, and there was definitely nothing that looked at all like craps, even though I was there on a Saturday night. I played blackjack for about an hour and lost $50.

Not surprisingly, today's chip is almost identical to yesterday's chip from the affiliated casino in Halifax. You could just use the same description with the differences limited to the color of the dashes – green instead of red – and the name of the city on the coin inlay. I guess if you do a really good job the first time, there's not much motivation to head in a different direction on the second try.



Since the rainy weather discouraged me from taking travel photos, I have none to post here to represent Sydney. Instead, I thought I would mention another spot in Nova Scotia, between Halifax and Sydney.

The town of Truro grew as a railroading center, and it is not far from where the province of Nova Scotia connects to New Brunswick. There are two things about Truro that really caught my interest, and the first one I didn't even know about until I got there.

For more than a century, the streets of Truro were the home of large, beautiful elm trees. Unfortunately, the Dutch elm disease reached the town and started wiping out the species. The community made the best of a very bad situation and started a project to create sculptures from the residual stumps/trunks of the trees that had died. Some of these are quite elaborate, and they are all over the town. Some represent historical figures, some show wildlife, and others represent activities of the area. Most of them are located right where the tree grew, with the roots still attached, though others have been repositioned.

You can read about this project here and download a guidebook, if that interests you. I'll just post a couple of images of these sculptures to give you an idea. These two show a representative lumberjack from the area's timber industry circa 1900 and a Mr. Pearl Merton Lowther, a machinist for the Canadian National Railway.


When I wrote about New Brunswick, I mentioned the extreme tides that occur in the Bay of Fundy. I guess I never mentioned the reason for them. For the engineers and scientists among you, it is basically a case of forced vibration, with a forcing function that has a frequency that is very nearly equal to the natural response frequency. That is, suppose you have a mass dangling from a spring and you oscillate the top of the spring as if you were playing with a yo-yo. If you move it too fast or too slow, you get limited motion of the mass. But if you pump the spring at just the right rate, dependent upon the mass and the stiffness of the spring, then the mass will bounce substantially, even if you only oscillate the top of the spring a little bit.

Similarly, there is a particular amount of time that is necessary for the mass of water to move from one end of the Bay of Fundy to the other; this period of motion implies a natural frequency of "vibration." It turns out that this time is very close to the time between tides, and the solar/lunar forces slosh the water back and forth in the bay at its natural frequency, giving the extreme tides.

Well, at the eastern end of the Bay of Fundy is the tapering Cobequid Bay, and at the extreme end of that is the mouth of several streams including the Salmon River. Normally, the river flows westward toward the open water, but as the tide rushes into the funnel to the river's mouth, it creates a flow surge back up the river, which is known as a tidal bore. This happens several places in the world, and I think there is a famous one in China. Roughly twice a day, the tidal bore becomes a minor tourist attraction in Truro, with the usual watching point being about a mile upstream of open water.

Some of the people who work in the motel and restaurants of the area say that they have to tell the tourists that no, there will not be a 30-foot wall of water coming up the river, in spite of how high the tide change might be. It's really just a small wave flowing upstream in an uncommon manner.

I made a cell phone video of this in 2006, and I just uploaded it to Youtube so that I could post the link here. It runs a little over two minutes and isn't really very exciting, but I thought I would bore you with the bore.

I think one of the funny things in the video happens about the 0:35 mark. A seated man and woman can see the wave approaching and aren't sure just how big it is, so they get up and move farther from the water. At the exact same time, two teenage girls farther down the way have spotted the wave, get up, and move closer to the water!

Have a look, if you like. I already know that the quality is poor, so you don't have to tell me. At the end of the video, Youtube provides links to videos that others have posted of this tidal bore, and those are likely better than mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uthlYXKQHoA&feature=youtu.be

Category: Canada
City: Rama, Ontario
Casino: Casino Rama

Hmm…. Once again, no comments on a chip. Or on the tree sculptures or low-res video. That seems fairly typical for Sunday postings in this thread. I'm still waiting for our Canadian members to join in and provide better info than this southern boy has to offer. Maybe I can generate more response with today's chip from a few provinces farther west.

I have listed the city for this casino as Rama, Ontario, because that is what it says on the chip. The MOGH catalog lists the location as Orillia, ON, though the Wiki page and CasinoCity.com both confirm the Rama city designation. GoogleMaps does not indicate Rama, ON is a searchable location in their database, but it shows Casino Rama, and the linked pop-up indicates Rama, ON as its mailing address.

Perhaps the discrepancy derives from the fact that Casino Rama is a tribal casino located on the lands of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation. It is roughly 70 straight-line miles north of Toronto, across Lake Couchiching from the town of Orillia, ON. Lake Couchiching is a northern extension of the much larger Lake Simcoe, with the two connected by only a 200-ft-wide narrows spanned by both a railway and the Trans-Canada Highway. I have to admit I had a bit of difficulty finding my way both to and from the casino in the dark, even with the aid of a GPS unit.

Wikipedia describes Casino Rama (in one place) as a joint venture of the First Nation, Penn National Gaming, and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. In another they say it is owned by the Chippewas and operated by Penn National, without saying whether Penn National has any ownership stake. I guess that's not really a conflict in their statements.

The place opened in July 1996. It is the largest First Nation casino in Canada and the only one in Ontario classified as a "commercial" or "resort" casino, as opposed to the province's lesser class of "Charity casino."

CasinoCity.com says that the place has 2,514 machines and 130 table games including 18 poker tables. The casino's own web site says they have over 2,500 machines and more than 110 gaming tables, including an 11-table poker room. I'll leave it to you to figure out whose figures are more up to date; I have no idea.

My wife and I went to Casino Rama one evening in June 2007, during a three-night visit to Toronto. I did not record my gaming results or even what game I played. They do offer craps, so I really expect that was the table I went to.

The thing I do remember is that they had a very reasonable policy for currency exchange. At the time, the Canadian dollar was worth about $0.94 US, though it dropped to about $0.80 in 2009. I went to the cage and changed some of the USD that I was carrying for the CAD used at the tables. Any exchange fee was hidden in the exchange rate, but they gave me a receipt and said I could exchange up to that amount from CAD back to USD at the same rate within 24 hours. As a result of that policy, players lost on the exchange only to the extent they lost the converted currency at the table, not the all-too-common practice of losing in the exchange in both directions.

The chip shown below is a white RHC Paulson with four narrow edge inserts, two each in dark green and pale gray. The center inlay is oversized and shows a photograph of a frozen stream. (Have I mentioned that I am glad that I don't have to live through Canadian winters?) The photograph actually reminds me a bit of the one I took at Taos, NM and posted here a few weeks ago, behind a "Taos Winter" spoiler button. I had the good judgment to be there taking photos when the temperature was high enough that the rio wasn't frozen.

The chip doesn't mention the Chippewa tribe, but it does include a traditional-style drawing in place of the "O" in the casino name – a radiating sun (?) with a leaping/landing buck. I don't know much at all about such creatures – is there a distinguishing feature to indicate whether that is a deer or an elk? UV light reveals the hidden Paulson logo and the fluorescence of the green edge inserts.

The MOGH catalog indicates that there are three versions of this chip. One has the ® symbol following the casino name as shown here; one has instead a ™ symbol in the same position, and the third one has neither. The catalog does not indicate whether there were different issue dates from which they handled the trademark notation differently.



I may soon run out of interesting and relevant travel photos – some might say that event line was crossed long ago – and I didn't take any during the excursion out to Rama/Orillia. I did get a few shots while in Toronto, so I'll share a couple of those here.

In the afternoon before driving out to Casino Rama for the evening, my wife and I took a cruise on Lake Ontario on the three-masted schooner Kajama. (No, I did not call that bit of fun a kajama party.) I cannot provide a photo of the ship under full sail, because while they were deployed, I was on board. I'm just posting a photo of the ship at the dock and a photo of the Toronto skyline with the CN Tower, as viewed from the lake through the ship's rigging. That tower is 1,815 feet tall, making it 58% taller than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. Hope you enjoy.

Over 100,000 views! Congrats, Doc!

Thanks, I guess. I would say, "I can bore the crowds with the best of them." However, if you check around, there are some really annoying threads with far more views -- perhaps equivalent to something like a train wreck.

Quote: Doc

I cannot provide a photo of the ship under full sail, because while they were deployed, I was on board.

If you are interested in more info, there are both a corporate web site and a Wikipedia page about the schooner Kajama, including its history and photos of it under full sale. If you have some free time in Toronto, you might enjoy the cruise as much as my wife and I did.

I'm four days or so late with this, but I finally found the design of the Casino New Brunswick chip in a catalog I downloaded from the Matsui web site. I edited my post to say that I believe that the casino purchased Matsui pattern CC.610-C chips from TCS John Huxley.

Here's my chip from Casino Rama. It's a Paulson RHC. I still think it's silly to use an image so large that the tophats are partially covered, but several casinos seem to disagree with me.

I visited the casino a little before noon, a day after visiting the Niagara area and the OLG facility in Brantford. Rama is a very nice casino, but it's utterly in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful, rustic nowhere; but I agree with Doc that it was pretty hard finding the way up there. My impression was that Rama did a pretty good business from tour/outing buses from the Toronto area. Maybe it was just because I was there on a Saturday morning, but there were a lot of announcements about buses and drawings and discounts.

Quote: rdw4potus

... and the OLG facility in Brantford.

Yeah, I need to get by that place. And all of those other Ontario, Quebec, New York places I mentioned recently in another thread.

I think the red tone and the canoe-on-a-lake image on your chip give me a much warmer, more comfortable feeling than the scene on mine.



Any guesses on tomorrow's chip?

May as well work in Maine and New Hampshire, too:-)

I really liked the OLG in Brantford. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than a gaming floor, but the games were fast and fun. Plus, inside the casino it almost didn't feel like sheets of ice were falling from the sky in 60 mph gusts of wind.

I think tomorrow's chip is the reverse side of a previous chip.

Quote: rdw4potus

I think tomorrow's chip is the reverse side of a previous chip.

Hmmm.... I'm not even sure what you are suggesting. I have some chips that have different casino names on the two sides, like Spa Resort and Agua Caliente in California, but I don't have any like that from Canada.


On the other topic, I will probably not check out the NH and ME casinos until the next time I take a trip to the Atlantic Provinces. From my starting point, by the time I get to Maine, I'm almost to Nova Scotia.

Well, my chips don't have that characteristic. And that is not the casino I have in mind for tomorrow.

Nice try, though. Any other guesses from anyone?

Quote: Doc

I have some chips that have different casino names on the two sides, like Spa Resort and Agua Caliente in California, but I don't have any like that from Canada.

And later....

Quote: Doc

Well, my chips don't have that characteristic.

Whooops! I got to thinking about this, lifted the end of the class cover on my desk, and flipped over a couple of chips to take a closer look. Turns out I do have a $1 chip just like the $5 chip that rdw4potus described behind that spoiler button. The chip I have already posted is the same on both sides, just as I thought, but the upcoming one is different on the "back" side, naming the neighboring casino we've already covered. I just never noticed it and haven't ever taken a photo of the other side of the chip.

That's still not the chip I have in mind for tomorrow, but it looks as if I need to get the camera out!

Category: Canada
City: Vancouver
Casino: Edgewater

So it's time to answer the answer to the question I posed last night. Yesterday, this casino tour of Canada moved from Nova Scotia to Ontario. Today, we take another giant leap westward, all the way to British Columbia.

The Edgewater Casino in Vancouver, BC is located on the shore of False Creek, a long, narrow inlet that partially divides the city. The casino opened in February 2005, right across the street from BC Place, the multi-sport arena that is home to professional soccer and hockey teams and served as the 2010 Winter Olympic Stadium.

Edgewater Casino (no relation that I can find to the like-named casino in Laughlin) markets itself as Downtown Vancouver's Boutique Casino. Their web site says they have more than 500 gaming machines, a poker room, and table games that include baccarat, Squeeze EZ Baccarat, Dragon Bonus Baccarat, Touch Bet Roulette, EZ Baccarat, blackjack, roulette, Pai Gow Poker, Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em, Four-Card Poker, and Electronic Baccarat. The site notes that they offer $5 blackjack and $10 baccarat all day, every day.

When I visited the casino on a Saturday afternoon in July 2008, I played craps, even though their web site no longer mentions their offering the game. I did not record the results of my session.

My souvenir shown below is a white plastic injection molded chip with nine blue bars and three instances of the numeral "1" in blue. The MOGH catalog says that this chip is from Bud Jones, but I have started to suspect that catalog all too frequently attributes to Bud Jones any plastic chip on which they can't find a manufacturer's logo. I have not seen this exact pattern on any manufacturer's site, but I believe this chip was manufactured by Matsui, not Bud Jones.

We have only seen one Matsui chip so far, I think, and I didn't positively identify that one until yesterday, so I thought I would ramble on a little today about the company and their chip designs. Matsui Gaming Machine is headquartered in Tokyo, but their web site says they recently moved their chip manufacturing into a plant on the outskirts of Seoul, Korea.

They have so many different chip features that can be combined that not all of the combinations – or even all of the variations of a single feature – seem to be included in the catalog I downloaded. You can download your own catalog, if you like, from the link on the right side of this web page. They even offer a design-your-chip tool – check it out under the "Matsui Chip Info" pull-down tab on that same page.

I was able to "design" one very similar to the Edgewater chip, but it didn't match exactly. If you would like to try it yourself, here are the seven selections I made: go to the design tool and look at (1) Decal Value Chips, (2) with Inner Ring, and (3) Wider insert 39/40mm. Next, (4) select the third pattern offered, then (5) select an "EP" inner ring. If the inner ring pattern they offer first isn't the one with the three 1s and three sets of double dashes, then scroll to that one. Then, (6) change the first color to white and (7) the second to blue. That's close to the plastic portion of the Edgewater chip, but not right on the nose.

The Edgewater chip's center inlay has the casino name and logo in a combination of burgundy and gold prints. The denomination mark, city, and province are provided in black print.

And now for a surprise: UV light reveals not a Matsui logo but a TCS John Huxley logo! I understand that Huxley sells/distributes Matsui chips, but it still surprises me that they have their own hidden logo on the chips.



Continuing for one more day the recent trend of accompanying these chip images with some travel photos, I am providing shots of two very different suspension bridges I have visited in the Vancouver area. (Have I mentioned that I like bridges?)

The Capilano suspension bridge is a pedestrian bridge across the gorge of the Capilano River, in the District of North Vancouver. It provides access to a very interesting Treetops Adventure, where you can walk high among the canopy of the forest. A hemp suspension bridge was originally constructed on the site in 1889, replaced with a wire cable bridge in 1903, and completely rebuilt in 1956. The current bridge is 460 feet long and 230 feet above the river. Naturally, there is a lot of flex in this bridge, and walking across it can be an adventure on its own, particularly if the youngsters are doing their best to make the whole world bounce.



The Lions Gate Bridge opened in 1938, crossing the Burrard Inlet from Vancouver to North Vancouver. Initially, it was a two-line bridge, but it was later increased to three lanes not by widening it but instead by repainting the (narrower) lanes. Lights designate the center lane direction depending on the traffic needs. The bridge's total span is 4,978 feet, with a main span of 1,550 feet and a ship's clearance of 200 feet – much longer but just a bit less peak height than the Capilano bridge.





Edit 5/28/20: Member RideTheEdge posted some additional images of Canadian casino chips here.

Well Doc you have finally made it to the 'left' coast of Canada where I live so I have some input. The Edgewater dropped craps several years ago so that is why it is no longer mentioned on their website. BC Place is indeed across the street and is home to the BC Lions (Canadian Football League) and Vancouver Whitecaps (MSL soccer team) it is not however a hockey venue. The hockey venue is also pretty much across the street formerly GM Place now called Rogers Arena and the home of Vancouver Canucks (NHL). Both venues were part of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

I am not a chip collector and although I occassionaly have a chip or two in my pocket when I get home but I don't have an Edgewater chip. The owners of the Edgewater also own other casinos in BC and western Canada but I don't believe they have any US holdings. They tried to get approval for a much larger casino/hotel/resort directly attached to BC Place Stadium a few years ago but were turned down by the left leaning, morally protectionist city council. The council felt it would be too hard on the financially challenged east side residents who don't have the fortitude to be able resist such attractions.

I will add a little more history on the Lions Gate Bridge that I hope you will find interesting. It was originally a privately owned and funded toll bridge. Some forward thinking developers that were part of the Guiness family built it to access property they bought on that side of the inlet at a very good price, since it only had ferry access. This development became British Properties and is now one of the highest income residential neighbourhoods in Canada. The name of the bridge comes from two of the peaks on the mountains on that side that look very much like a pair resting lions.

Thank you very much for the reply, kenarman. I've been waiting/hoping for some informed input by our Canadian members, but I guess maybe the others got tired of waiting for me to get to their local casinos and stopped following the thread.

I particularly appreciate your correcting my misinformation on BC Place. Obviously, I misremembered what I had been told, and I likely just confused what was said about BC Place and Rogers Arena. I probably have disseminated lots of rubbish in this thread without anyone bothering to correct me. No telling how many people believed my erroneous "facts" -- after all, they were published on the internet! And thanks for the added info on craps at Edgewater; I assumed that the game had been dropped, but it's nice to get the straight scoop.

Please be sure to check in again in a couple of days, when I will be posting a chip from (and likely passing out more misinformation on) another casino in your area.

My wife and I have visited Vancouver four times. In September 2004, we were there for two nights before catching a cruise ship. The ship had just finished the summer season of cruises to Alaska, and we caught it for a trip out to Hawaii -- six nights at sea followed by six nights hopping around the islands. The following May, we took the Alaska cruise that my wife really had wanted in the first place. That ship had spent the winter in the Caribbean and had just sailed through the canal. We boarded it in San Diego and spent two weeks on board, sailing up to Alaska and back to Vancouver. We spent just one night there before catching the train down to Seattle the following evening to meet my brother and a friend, giving us almost two days to re-explore Vancouver.

Then, in September 2007, we caught another cruise ship out of Vancouver. That time we didn't get to spend any time in the city -- a bus took us directly from the airport to the cruise port for a 21-night cruise down to the Panama Canal and over to Fort Lauderdale. After just riding through the town too quickly that day, we decided to make a Vancouver visit strictly to see the city, without any ships being involved. We flew there for a six-night stay in July 2008. We haven't managed to get back there again since. I have never had a rental car in Vancouver, so we have only seen the places that Gray Line Tours took us or where we could get on foot or navigate to on the City buses and ferries.

Thanks also for the background info on Lions Gate Bridge. I like that out-of-the-tunnel view that I posted, but it doesn't really show the bridge very well. Here's another one from a different spot in Stanley Park that shows it a little better.



Edit: You might want to compare that bridge photo to the one I posted here when discussing another casino chip that I got in downtown Las Vegas.

If you have another BC chip I likely will have some input. The second bridge picture show the area where 'the lions' are but from the wrong angle. They are near the peaks (bumps) on the right hand mountain. Like many geographical features they can't be mistaken from the proper vantage point but are not particularly notable from other angles. If you and your wife ever make it to BC again I would be glad to try and meet with you but would need some advance notice since I actually live 350 miles north of there. I had hoped to meet you and the others in Vegas in May since the get together is on my birthday but I am unlikely to make it now. When we used to travel to Vegas several times a year my birthday was one of the usual times since Caesars usually comped us several days for both my and my wifes birthday.

Well, 350 miles seems like a long commute to a "home" casino. Sorry to hear that you won't be joining us at WoVCon ]I[ (or ///).

By the way, your sig line -- "Computers are useless they only give answers" Picasso -- shows how much perspectives might change over time. Pablo Picasso died in 1973, before most people would have had any chance to use a computer, and before any of us had one at home to see how much we can get practical use from them. He likely never saw any computer-generated art on which to express an opinion one way or another.

Quote: Doc

Well, 350 miles seems like a long commute to a "home" casino. Sorry to hear that you won't be joining us at WoVCon ]I[ (or ///).

By the way, your sig line -- "Computers are useless they only give answers" Picasso -- shows how much perspectives might change over time. Pablo Picasso died in 1973, before most people would have had any chance to use a computer, and before any of us had one at home to see how much we can get practical use from them. He likely never saw any computer-generated art on which to express an opinion one way or another.

Yes that is true but I like the concept of the thought. Advances usually come from asking that simple question that hadn't been asked about something before - WHY. Todays computers though can almost ask questions as they power through a massive number of scenerios with brute force to find answers for questions we might not of actually hadn't asked.

I am not sure of the date of the Picasso quote but my first experience with computers was a IBM 360 in the basement of the University of BC engineering building in 1969. I never saw the machine, it was in a very strictly controlled environment. My interface with it was via punch cards.

My first computer experience was on an IBM 1620 as a student at Davidson College in 1964. I like to say that I took every single computer course taught at the school then, all 1 semester hour. We learned to program in Fortran II-D, keypunched our own cards, and operated the computer ourselves, even powering it up if we went to use it in the evening after it had been shut down at the end of the work day. Since this was a single-user system, I suppose this was a "Personal Computer," though it was owned by the school. I had jobs several summers in the '60s at a Navy facility, programming and operating an IBM 1401 and then operating an IBM 360, though I never wrote programs that were run on that one. The first computer I owned myself was a KayPro II running the CP/M operating system -- bought it in 1982.

I don't know how I got it, but I just found a 25¢ gaming token from Casino Windsor.

Does it have a picture of the queen on it? I think those 25¢ "tokens" are widely circulated, both in the casino and elsewhere.    ;-)

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In case I was misunderstood, I was referring to this kind of thing:

hope this works. Did a quick pic from my phone and uploaded to facebook

[spoiler=25¢ "token"][/spoiler]

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Quote: Ibeatyouraces

Looks like a quarter to me.

Of course. That's what it is. I was just being silly with my comments and "token" post, but it does surprise me that they would have bothered to make a 25¢ token for a casino. In the U.S., quarters are so common that it's difficult to imagine anyone bothering to mint their own tokens with that value. The only places I know that do that are arcades where either (1) they sometimes sell them at a discount for quantity purchases or (2) they are concerned that having a large quantity of real quarters in the drop box might lead to vandalism and theft. Doesn't seem that a casino would fit into either of those cases.

deleted

It was illegal to put a real coin in a slot machine but legal to gamble with tokens that could be converted to cash? I had never heard that before.

Learn something new most every century.