MONTREAL — It’s 1:22 a.m. and Marie, holding a cup of stale coffee in her left hand, repeatedly hits the green ‘Play’ button with her right. She doesn’t dare take her eyes off the glowing purple screen a few inches from her face.

On either side of the frigid St. Lawrence river, most of Montreal is sleeping. But she and hundreds of others are slouched atop stools under flashing coloured lights, feeding $20s into one of 3,200 slot machines at the city’s island gambling mecca, Casino Montreal.

“I like to come late, around 11 or midnight,” Marie (not her real name) says in French over the dissonant chorus of ringing slot machines. “That’s when it’s less busy.”

If Torontonians want to see what could happen if a casino set up shop, this five-storey building on a man-made island may be the best place to look.

Related: Do casinos drive up the crime rate?

Nearly 20 years ago, Montreal became the first major Canadian city to open a casino. The same debate now dividing Toronto city hall raged in Quebec in 1992, when a gaming house was suggested as a way to help fill depleting provincial coffers.

Detractors predicted the casino would draw prostitutes and pimps, prompt pawn shops and create jobs, indeed — for loan sharks and drug pushers. The mayor of the Mount Royal suburb called it morally bankrupt; in a leaked confidential letter to the province’s tourism minister, Montreal’s chief of police warned of the potential for an increase in crime.

But with a growing number of Quebecers heading south for their gambling fix (between 1988 and 1992 alone, the number going to U.S. casinos doubled, according to Loto-Quebec) Montreal opted to take advantage of the huge profit potential. In a 1992 municipal vote, councillors resoundingly voted in a casino.

One year later, the building’s glass doors opened on Ile de Notre Dame, an island constructed for Expo ’67. It’s been a vache d’argent — cash cow — ever since, winning the Quebec government about $200 million per year, $4.1 billion since the first cards were dealt. Unlike a cut of the revenue expected for Toronto if the casino comes to town, the City of Montreal gets no portion of those profits.

The casino’s early success was thanks not to beginner’s luck but to Montreal’s insatiable gambling appetite. More than 12,000 people regularly flocked to the casino per day, far surpassing the anticipated 5,000. The enthusiasm persisted, and three years (and 10 million visits) later, Loto-Quebec, the government agency that operates the province’s four casinos, expanded its Montreal location into a nearby building.

Soon after, security guards stopped kicking out gamblers at the 5 a.m. closing time; in 1997 the government began hosting a 24-7 party.

“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” said smiling truck driver Klause Mueller, betting $25 on red at 4 a.m. on a recent Tuesday morning. The roulette tables teem with eager gamblers, some running around placing chips on various tables, jittery from the free coffee.

In the high-roller sections, the real money ($1,000 bets, anyone?) is spent at blackjack and poker tables.

“It’s going really well for us,” says Germain Guitor, vice-president of sales and marketing for Quebec’s casinos. “I think we’re managing a really good business, we have a great customer base, we’re doing some exciting things, and we’re contributing to the economy, to society.”

The casino’s close yet remote location has been an important factor. Though it’s near downtown, gamblers must drive or take the subway and a shuttle bus to the island facility. It’s what an Ontario Place casino might be: near the city centre, but not a five-minute trip you make on your lunch hour.

The relative isolation has allowed security and police to keep a watchful eye, said Lieut. Ian Lafrenière, a spokesperson for the Montreal police. Despite warnings of increased crime, there are zero statistics to suggest a spike in illegal activity, he said.

That said, “we’re not stupid,” Lafrenière added; organized crime can be present wherever there’s potential to make money. But the types of crimes that tend to be committed around casinos, such as loan sharking, are usually not reported, making them difficult to monitor. He also says the impact of the casino on crime may be felt in other parts of the city.

Nonetheless, police have barely had to increase their presence on the island, in the form of two paid-duty police officers who help direct traffic. The casino’s security staff and many cameras keep careful watch inside and outside the building.

The importance of the location became apparent when, in 2006, Loto-Quebec tried to move the casino. The ambitious project — a casino, hotel and entertainment project with Cirque du Soleil — was not possible on the island, so Loto-Quebec suggested Pointe St. Charles.

The inner-city neighbourhood near the downtown is populated by many low-income people, and there was a massive backlash from community groups and problem gambling experts who said the location could lead to trouble.

“Where it is now, it takes a certain amount of effort to get there, and we didn’t want that to change,” said Jean-François Biron, a researcher with Montreal’s health and social services agency and an author on a study of the possible casino move. “We concluded that it would not contribute to the health of Montrealers and, to the contrary, could have created problems.”

The project was shelved because of the opposition. Loto-Quebec has instead taken on a billion-dollar renovation project to keep the casino competitive in a market that it says has increased ten-fold in the past decade, with the explosion of casinos in Canada and the U.S., VLTs in bars and the proliferation of online gambling.

Still, the St. Lawrence has not buffered the city from social problems. Signs of pathological gambling aren’t hard to spot in rooms where some gamblers spend hour after hour at the slots or so-called one-armed bandits, entranced and unmoving.

Casino employees are not permitted to speak to media on the record, but three confirmed that a few gamblers, not wanting to leave their seats for the washrooms, have been known to relieve themselves on the carpets. Others wear diapers into the building.

Long-standing rumours of suicides on the premises persist. But according to Quebec coroner’s office, there is only one on record: 46-year-old Daniel Naudi shot himself in the head in the casino parking lot in 2001 after, according to his family, he lost a large sum of money.

Naudi had signed up for the self-exclusion list — whereby gamblers ask the casino not to let them in any more — but had taken himself off the list one year before his death. “There is place to question whether inclusion of Naudi on the self-exclusion list could have prevented his suicide,” reads the coroner’s report.

Wherever the deaths occur, there’s a clear link between gambling and suicide in the province. Between 2001 and 2009, the most recent available data, 246 people killed themselves due to problem gambling. (The death is considered gambling-related if a suicide note mentions gambling, or if family confirm the death was related to a gambling addiction.)

Geneviève Guilbault, spokesperson for the provincial coroner, could not say if the casino’s presence prompted an increase in suicides because the office cannot get figures from 1993 without an access-to-information request, she said.

According to Sol Boxenbaum, a gambling addiction counsellor and critic of government-run gambling, many gambling suicides are not recorded as such because of the prevailing stigma. When one of his clients committed suicide a few years ago, the death was not documented as gambling-related because the man’s family would not confirm that he was an addict.

Gambling has also increased homelessness, said Matthew Pearce, executive director of Old Brewery Mission, a downtown Montreal homeless shelter.

“The casino, and state-sponsored gambling such as lottos, is — and I’ll say it categorically — a generator of homelessness,” he said. “The state is creating homelessness on one hand and then trying to support organizations like ours on the other.”

More than other types of addiction they see at the shelter, such as drinking and drugs, gambling is extremely difficult to resolve, Pearce said.

One man staying at Old Brewery Mission, who asked for anonymity, said he became addicted to gambling after the Montreal casino opened.

“I lost everything,” he said in French. His eyes turned red and welled up with tears when he mentioned a friend who killed himself after doing the same.

“It’s a very, very powerful addiction, gambling. And most addicted are the governments right now,” Boxenbaum said. “They don’t want to know about the consequences; they just want the instant gratification.”

Among the major criticisms of the Montreal casino is that just 10 per cent of the visits come from outside the province — meaning the majority of the money brought in is from Quebecers.

It’s what Quebec calls a voluntary tax — “you get the same services whether you play or not, it’s a choice,” said Jean-Pierre Roy, spokesperson with Loto-Quebec.

Both Roy and Guitor say that for the vast majority of their clients, a visit to the casino is like going to a show or out for dinner. People don’t feel they’re losing money, he says; they’re spending it, with the added bonus that they might get it back, and then some.

“The truth is, I personally think I have one of the most noble jobs in Quebec, because gambling is … a leisure activity,” said Guitor. “This company satisfies that need or that want for diversion or excitement, and the monies that we collect and contribute to society contribute positively to the collectivity of Quebec.”

That’s not to say that Loto-Quebec doesn’t acknowledge there are problem gamblers, he said. Casino staff are trained to watch for signs of addiction — there are employees whose full-time job is to watch for people who have put themselves on the self-exclusion list.

Loto-Quebec also contributes $22 million to the ministry of health and social services to help fund prevention and educational programs and hotlines, and the province recently earned the highest level of certification for responsible gambling by the World Lottery Association.

So what are the odds that Toronto will get a casino?

Montrealers at the casino, perhaps not surprisingly, can’t agree on whether it’s a good bet.

“Do it, and let me smoke, let me drink, and I’ll come,” said Louis Panichelli, enjoying a drink at the bar, the only place you’re allowed to consume alcohol at the casino. “Toronto will have to loosen up, though.”

Outside on a smoke break, Martine Laroche, disagrees, saying it will encourage too many people to come.

Back at the slots, where he’s just won $40 thanks to triple 7s, 78-year-old Andre Ouellette laughs uproariously upon learning Toronto doesn’t have a casino.

“Why not?” he says, regaining his composure. “Though I guess it’s really up to you.”

Montreal Casino, by the numbers

• Annual profits to Quebec government: $200 million

• Total profits since the casino opened in 1993: $4.1 billion

• Total visits since the casino opened: 108 million

• Visits per year: 6 million

• Visitors: 90% from Quebec; 10% out of province

• Average age of gambler: 57

• Employees: 3,000