Timeline
| Year | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5,000–6,000 years ago | People occupy the land around Leamy Lake; digs have found stone and native-copper tools and pottery fragments | National Capital Commission |
| 19th century | Andrew Leamy, an Irish settler married to a granddaughter of Hull's founder Philemon Wright, runs a mill near the lake that now carries his name | Wikipedia |
| 1904 | A bird's-eye view shows the International Portland Cement Company plant on the site of today's casino | Wikipedia |
| 1961 | Leamy Lake Park is created; it becomes the largest urban park in the National Capital Region (174 ha) | NCC |
| Early 1990s | Ottawa plans a casino; Wikipedia says the Government of Ontario blocks the plans | Wikipedia |
| June 1995 | Ottawa Citizen headline: plans for a $120M Hull casino unveiled | Wikipedia (citing the Citizen) |
| 24 March 1996 | Casino de Hull opens, the third casino built by the Quebec government | Wikipedia |
| March 1996 | Electrical works completed: 45 gaming tables, 1,250 slot machines, a marina for 50 boats, parking for 2,000 vehicles | Lambert Somec project record |
| March 1997 | Ottawa Citizen headline: the casino "outdraws Parliament, Corel Centre" | Wikipedia (citing the Citizen) |
| 2001 | The Hilton tower, theatre and convention centre open; the hotel is rated five stars by the CITQ | NCK, Loto-Québec |
| 2002 | CAA-AAA Four Diamond rating, held since | Loto-Québec |
| 2002–2006 | Hilton's Connie Award for best overall performance in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006 | Loto-Québec |
| 2010 | Readers of Condé Nast Traveler place it among the 100 best hotels in the world | Loto-Québec |
| 2023 | BOMA BEST Platinum environmental certification | Loto-Québec |
| November 2026 | Bouquet, a wine and small-plates restaurant on the casino's third level, lists an opening date of 18 November | Loto-Québec |
The building: a tower on the cliff
The engineering firm NCK, which handled structural and civil engineering for the hotel as part of a joint venture, describes the project in unusual detail. The client was Casiloc. The building has 25 floors and 20,000 square metres and cost $143 million. The 349 rooms sit on a podium holding the lobby, the restaurant, the spa, a sports centre with indoor and outdoor pools and the kitchens that serve the convention centre. The theatre, with 1,007 seats over a parterre and a balcony, is a separate 5,200 m² building of its own, with rehearsal and dressing rooms. A 1,000-space parking garage with a helipad completed the package. The tower is reinforced concrete, "built directly on the rock at the edge of a cliff bordering Leamy Lake". We could not find the name of the original 1996 casino architect in any document we could open, so we leave it blank rather than guess.
Story: the lake that used to be a quarry
Lac de la Carrière means "quarry lake", and the name is literal. The cement company dug the rock; the hole filled with water; the casino was later built on the rocky edge above it. In summer a large fountain throws a jet that, according to Wikipedia, can be seen across much of the old Hull sector. It is the kind of industrial-to-leisure conversion that the capital region does often, but rarely with a five-star hotel on the lip of the pit.
Story: the capital's casino in the next province
The plainest piece of political history is also the most telling. Ottawa, the larger city across the river, was planning its own casino in the early 1990s. Wikipedia records that the Government of Ontario blocked it, and that the Hull casino therefore came to serve Ottawa and Eastern Ontario as well. It explains a lot about the place today: why the theatre's line-up mixes French and English acts, why ConnexOntario belongs on a Quebec casino's help list, and why the minimum age changes as you cross a bridge (18 in Quebec, 19 in Ontario).
Story: "outdraws Parliament"
The Ottawa Citizen's headline of 22 March 1997, as cited by Wikipedia, put it in the capital's own terms: Hull's casino "outdraws Parliament, Corel Centre". We have only the headline, not the figures behind it, so we print no figures. For 2016, Wikipedia reports more than 1,400 employees and more than two and a half million visitors.
What we left out, on purpose
- Legends. We looked for documented local legends about the casino or the hotel and found none we could cite. We are not going to supply one.
- Le Baccara. French Wikipedia describes a five-diamond restaurant of that name in the casino. It is not on Loto-Québec's restaurant list today and we found no statement about its closure, so we mention it only as history.
- A study worth knowing. French Wikipedia summarises research by Université Laval's School of Psychology, five years after the opening: casino visits and the largest losses among Gatineau residents rose immediately after the casino opened, then fell at three and five years, still above the pre-opening level, while the share of residents with a gambling disorder did not rise. It is a reminder that a casino next door changes habits, and it sits next to our responsible gambling page for a reason.
The lake and park today and the verdict on the hotel pick up where this page ends.