Maine gamblers head for New Brunswick

TOBIQUE RESERVE, New Brunswick – Many northern Maine residents who will be voting on a casino gambling referendum in six weeks frequent gambling facilities on the Tobique First Nation Reserve located a few miles from the Maine border near Fort Fairfield.

Lucky 7 Entertainment, operated by the Tobique First Nation, runs seven days a week from noon to midnight. Opened six years ago, the entertainment center is located in the same building as a high stakes bingo hall that has been operating for 15 years.

The Tobique First Nation reserve, next to the town of Perth-Andover, encompasses 5,600 acres. The reserve has 1,925 members, 1,300 of whom live on the reserve. It is the second-largest Indian community in New Brunswick, and the largest Maliseet reserve.

Gerald Bear, a Tobique Reserve councilor and manager of Lucky 7 Entertainment, maintains that the gambling facility is not a casino because New Brunswick is still debating the legality of casinos.

“It enhances employment here, enhances revenue for the reserve and for the tribe,” he said Saturday.

Still, a quick tour of the facility Saturday revealed about 200 video gambling terminals – called slot machines by people who use them – that are operated with money. Prizes are paid off in credits, and 10 credits equals 50 cents. Users turn in credits for cash when they leave, or stop gambling.

Users don’t have the thrill of hearing coins drop out of the machine when they win. They simply get a credit slip from an attendant.

Maine Rep. Florence Young, R-Limestone, is an “occasional user” of the Tobique hall.

“I have mixed emotions about gambling and a casino in Maine,” Young said Sunday. She said a large number of northern Maine residents gamble at the facility. “Maine needs the jobs badly,” she said.

“However, there are people who abuse gambling,” she reflected. “It’s a situation of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Young wouldn’t say how she will vote in November, but she said such facilities are fine if they are used for recreation.

Emilien “Mulligan” Picard of Madawaska, Maine, agrees. He gambles about once a month at the reserve, about 60 miles from Madawaska. He also goes to Foxwoods and the Monhegan Sun casinos in Connecticut twice a year, and has been to Las Vegas twice in recent years.

“It’s an outing, a change of pace instead of always being around town,” the 60-year-old retired papermaker said Sunday. “Every time I go, there are 10 to 15 people I know from the St. John Valley there.

“When I go, I have a set budget, and when that’s gone, I leave,” he said. “It’s recreational, and sometimes we even make a little bit of money.”

Picard said he will vote for having a casino in Maine in November.

“I’ve never seen any trouble there,” Picard said, referring to Lucky 7 Entertainment, “just people having fun.

“I don’t consider myself an addict of gambling,” he said. “Gambling there is no worse than buying Maine lottery tickets, and some of those are being sold for $10 each now.”

In the Tobique Indian Reserve area, there are no municipal police. Fort Fairfield Police Chief Joseph Bubar said Friday, however, that he “has not seen any problems from the facility [Lucky 7 Entertainment].”

Bear described Lucky 7 Entertainment as a “little facility” that has caused no related major crime. He said the facility employs 72 full-time and part-time employees. Most of them are reserve members, 30 percent are nonmembers who have ties to the reserve, and the remaining 5 percent are just “real good workers that are good to have.”

“It is a tribal operation, and it is very successful,” Bear said, standing in the parking lot of Lucky 7 Entertainment.

“Money made here is used by and for the reserve,” he continued. “It funds programs for the church, recreation, other projects for youths and for capital projects on the reserve.”

Lucky 7 Entertainment also has a bar and a restaurant. Bear would not allow cameras inside the facility because of security. He also would not allow patrons to be interviewed while they were playing.

Bear said crime and addiction do not go hand in hand with gambling facilities. He added that people who are addicted to gambling will gamble whether there is a casino or not and will find some other way to bet.

Save for an occasional patron who has had too much to drink, Bear said there have been few incidents at Lucky 7 Entertainment. He added that the crime rate around the reserve facility is almost nil.

“The video terminal facility brings in traffic, brings in business to the reserve,” he said. “We have a good percentage of users who are Americans.

“I’m sure a casino in Maine would be very successful,” he said.