First provincial lottery is begun in Quebec to help pay for Expo 67
Archives de la Ville de Montréal, VM6-D401-12-1
1968
To help pay for the municipal deficits created by Expo 67, Montréal’s Mayor Jean Drapeau announced in April 1968 that the city had created a voluntary tax in the form of a lottery. It was the first government-administered lottery in Canada. The first draw was held the next month, but by December 1969 the lottery ended, after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it to be illegal. Around this time, the Quebec provincial government took up Drapeau’s public lottery initiative and created Loto-Québec, which held its first draw on March 14, 1970.
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