Local author fighting back

Gisele Jubinville can remember the moment the light bulb went on.

Jubinville, who still lives in St. Albert, had sold her invention to an American company for more than $1 million in 1995. She and her husband were living well — except for the fact that she had gambled about $400,000 of that fortune away on video lottery terminals (VLTs).

Her blissful ignorance ended early one morning in 1999.

“When it really, really hit me … [was] I had gone to a bar at 9:50 a.m., in front of a bar waiting for it to open,” she said. “I don’t even drink, and I had never been to a bar by myself. But it’s 9:50 a.m. and I’m waiting for the manager to open up so that I can get the same machine I was playing the night before because I had lost so much money; this is a standard thing for regular players.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, what the hell am I doing?’ Of course, they were way worse words than that. But it takes a long time for a person to admit that to themselves, that they’re addicted.”

After that epiphany, Jubinville went on to do her own research into the business of VLTs and — shocked by what she found — turned that research into her new book, Dismissed: How One Woman’s Intuition Ended Her Addiction and Exposed a Government Cover-up. Jubinville will officially launch the book on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the St. Albert United Church (20 Green Grove Dr.).

When she deposited that million-dollar cheque, Jubinville said she had “more time on my hands, and I’m not one to sit idle,” so, having played poker most of her life, she filled the time by heading to the casino.

“When I went there, you had to wait to get on [a table], and sitting and doing nothing doesn’t work for me, so that’s how I started playing the machines,” she said.

“At the beginning, I was going maybe once every couple of weeks or something. And then it quickly mushroomed to a couple times a week, then more than that. Looking back, within a year, I was certainly no longer playing poker when I’d go; I was strictly playing machines.”

For the next three years after that fateful morning, Jubinville struggled to keep her addiction in check, but also used her inquisitive nature and began to arm herself with knowledge about VLTs and addictions — and perhaps a little bit of information she wasn’t supposed to have courtesy of the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission.

“I had printed one of their annual reports … so I was kind of studying it, and there were some big figures there. I thought, ‘Man, it’s hard to believe Albertans would have spent that much money on machines.’ It was unbelievable to me,” Jubinville said. “I phoned and said, ‘Would you happen to have the actual amount of money that was put into the machines in one year?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I happen to have that here.’ She took a minute, then gave them to me. And as I’m talking to her, she’s giving me the figures, and they don’t match. They’re way different.

“I hung up, looked at it again, then phoned her back and asked, ‘How come those are so different than what you guys have on your annual reports?’ And she said, ‘I actually don’t know that, unless’ — I could tell she was getting nervous — ‘unless I gave you figures that were meant for internal use only.’”

Jubinville also read research papers and found Internet videos that talked about the methodology of VLTs and the psychology of reinforcement, which finally quashed her addiction.

Now that she had this information, the next logical step was to write it down. It was a daunting task — not just because she was taking on a provincial government, but mostly because of the personal wounds the process re-opened.

“When you’ve been to the pit of hell that I’ve been to, through the utmost despair that I’ve been through, when you’ve lost so much — I had lost my dignity, my money, my marriage just about — I don’t know what else I can lose,” she said.

But it was worth it, as two MLAs — St. Albert Progressive Conservative Ken Allred and Edmonton-Gold Bar Liberal Hugh MacDonald — read her manuscript and immediately took up her cause, pressuring the AGLC to release financial information and trying to ensure any coverups in the organization are exposed.

As she looks back on her ordeal, Jubinville often smiles and jokes. She said that having a good sense of humour about what happened is essential to keeping her head together.

“I truly, 100 per cent believe in the power of thought … Sometimes I have to remind myself to bring a sense of humour, because this is very serious stuff,” she said.

Even though her book is now on bookstore shelves, it is not the end of the journey for Jubinville. She knows there is still a lot of work to do.

“I call on the government to be open and transparent,” she said.

“God had a plan,” she added, “and my addiction was part of that plan.”

Dismissed is available at the Bookstore on Perron and the Chapters location in St. Albert. You can also download the first three chapters for free off her publisher’s website at www.adigibooks.com.

— GLENN COOK, St. Albert Leader