Play responsibly

Responsible gambling

A raffle ticket is entertainment. It is not a plan, an investment or a way out of trouble. If it has stopped feeling like entertainment, help is free and confidential.

Free, confidential, 24 hours a day

ConnexOntario
1-866-531-2600

connexontario.ca — information and referral for problem gambling, mental health and addiction services across Ontario. You do not have to give your name.

Rules we hold ourselves to

Nobody under 18 may buy a ticket, in the hall or online.
We do not advertise the raffle as a solution to anything.
We publish jackpots as estimates and never inflate them.
We do not use casino imagery, countdown pressure tactics or "last chance" language beyond a plain statement of the cut-off time.
Volunteers at the bar will refuse a sale to anyone who appears to be in difficulty, and will not be argued out of it.

Setting your own limit

Decide what you are willing to spend on a draw before you open the ticket page, and treat it the way you would treat the cost of a night out. If you would like the branch to decline sales to you, tell any executive member; we will honour it without discussion and without telling anyone why.

Myths and facts

"The more I play, the better my odds get."

False. Each draw is separate. Buying into ten draws in a row does not improve your chance in the eleventh. Within a single draw, buying more tickets does improve your share of the pot — but it also increases what you have spent, and the odds of any one ticket never change.

"I'm due for a win."

False. A random number generator has no memory of you. There is no such thing as being due.

"I have a lucky number."

Comforting, but false. In a 50/50 the numbers issued depend entirely on when the ticket was sold. No number is luckier than another.

"I can win my money back."

This is the most dangerous belief in gambling. Chasing losses is the clearest warning sign that play has stopped being entertainment. If you recognise it in yourself, telephone ConnexOntario.

"It's for charity, so it doesn't count."

The cause is real, but the risk is the same. A ticket bought to support the branch is still money spent on a chance, and it is still not tax-receiptable.

Signs worth paying attention to

Spending more than you meant to. Hiding it from family. Borrowing to play. Feeling anxious rather than entertained. Any one of these is reason enough to make the call above.

Ontario also runs PlaySmart, a free service with self-assessment tools and plain-language information about how games of chance work.

A short self-check

None of these questions is a diagnosis. They are the sort of thing a counsellor would ask, and answering yes to any of them is a good enough reason to telephone the number at the top of this page.

Have you spent more on draws than you meant to, more than once?
Have you gone back to a draw to recover what you lost on the last one?
Have you been vague with your family about how much you have spent?
Have you borrowed money, delayed a bill, or used money set aside for something else, in order to play?
Do you think about the next draw at times when you would rather not?
Has anyone who cares about you said something about it, even lightly?
Do you feel worse after a draw than before it, whatever the result?

There is no threshold to cross before you are allowed to ask for help. ConnexOntario will talk to anyone, including people who are not sure they have a problem at all.

If you are worried about somebody else

You do not need their permission to get advice. ConnexOntario takes calls from family members and friends, and will talk through what to say and what services exist near Iroquois, Morrisburg, Winchester and Cornwall.

Say what you have noticed, not what you have concluded. "You seem stretched" travels further than "you have a problem".
Do not cover a debt without a conversation about what happens next. Paying it off quietly is the single most common way a problem gets bigger.
Do not police it alone. Get advice for yourself first — the call above is free for you too.
If it is a member of this branch, an executive member will treat a quiet word as confidential. It will not be discussed at the bar.

Asking us to stop selling to you

Tell any branch executive member, in person or by telephone on 613-652-4516. We will honour it, we will not ask why, and we will not tell anyone else why.
We will record only that you have asked, and for how long. That record is kept as private as anything else we hold — see the Privacy Policy.
Once our raffle supplier is contracted, whatever self-exclusion controls their platform offers will be listed here and honoured alongside ours.
We cannot enforce another operator's self-exclusion list, and we will not claim to. If you are excluded elsewhere, tell us and we will apply it here too.

How this site is built to reduce harm

Some of the pressure in online gambling is designed in. We have tried to design it out, and you can hold us to this list.

No casino imagery anywhere — no dice, no chips, no slot symbols, no coin showers.
No flashing countdowns, no "only 3 left", no artificial scarcity. The cut-off is stated once, plainly, because it is a fact.
No pop-up that reappears to nag you into buying, and no email to people who looked and did not buy.
Jackpots are labelled estimated and are deliberately described as modest, because in a village of 1,400 people that is the truth.
The Rules of Play are reachable from the main menu, from the footer of every page and from the interstitial you see before leaving for the checkout — not buried in small print at the end.
The ConnexOntario number appears on every page of this site, including this one, the 404 page and the under-18 page.
There is a telephone number for people who would rather talk to a person than a checkout.

Where to get help

Support services
Service	Contact	What it is
ConnexOntario	1-866-531-2600 connexontario.ca	Free, confidential, 24/7 information and referral for gambling, mental health and addiction services anywhere in Ontario. Interpretation available.
PlaySmart	playsmart.ca	Self-assessment tools and plain explanations of how games of chance actually work.
Gamblers Anonymous	gamblersanonymous.org	Peer support meetings, including online meetings for people outside the larger centres.
Credit Counselling Canada	creditcounsellingcanada.ca	Non-profit help with debt, for when the money side needs its own plan.
Branch 370 Service Officer	613-652-4516	For Veterans and their families: confidential support, entirely separate from the raffle. See Veterans support.

If you are in immediate danger or crisis, call 911, or 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.