Madeleine Roy — Senior Casino Editor

Who I Am and What I Cover

I'm Maddie Roy, the senior casino editor at Hudson Casino. If you've landed on one of our top lists — the homepage rankings, the mobile casino guide, the $1 deposit casino round-up, the new casinos page, or the offshore casinos comparison — there's a good chance my name is on the byline or that I've signed off on the final draft. I write most of the structural reviews, the ranking explanations, and the methodology notes that sit underneath every table on this site.

I'm based in Toronto, in the east end, although I grew up in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, and I still think in French before I think in English most mornings. I moved here in 2010 for journalism school at what was then Ryerson — now Toronto Metropolitan University — and never quite left. The short version of what I do at Hudson Casino: I read terms and conditions so you don't have to, and I argue with the rest of the editorial team about whether a 50x wagering requirement is acceptable on a $1 deposit (it usually isn't).

How I Got Here

Before iGaming, I spent five years at the Toronto Star on the personal finance desk. That was 2013 to 2018, mostly covering consumer protection — predatory payday lenders along Eglinton, the long collapse of Sears Canada and what happened to people's gift cards, the early days of robo-advisors when nobody quite trusted them yet. I wrote a lot about fine print. I learned that the line between a legitimate financial product and a borderline-predatory one is almost always in the disclosures nobody reads.

My first iGaming feature ran in Maclean's in late 2018 — a piece about offshore gambling sites taking Canadian credit cards before any province outside Quebec had a real regulated framework. After that I freelanced for a few years: a long piece for Wired Canada about how operators were geo-fencing Ontario in anticipation of regulation, a couple of Globe and Mail Report on Business shorter pieces about Loto-Québec's monopoly position, the occasional explainer for The Walrus when they wanted somebody who could write about gambling without either moralizing or cheerleading.

When the AGCO and iGaming Ontario opened the regulated Canadian market in April 2022, I came to Hudson Casino full-time. The timing was deliberate. I wanted to be writing about this market from day one — not catching up to it three years in. I've now been writing online casino reviews and covering the regulated Canadian market as my main beat for almost four years.

How I Actually Test Casinos

This is the part that takes the longest, and it's the part I refuse to shortcut.

For every operator that ends up in one of our top lists, I make a real-money deposit from my own bank account. Usually $20, sometimes $50, sometimes the bare minimum if I'm testing a mobile casino app or a $1 deposit casino. I play through enough of the wagering requirement to understand whether the bonus terms are honest or whether the operator has buried something nasty in the fine print — a max-bet-while-bonus-active clause is the classic trap, but there are at least a dozen variations.

Then I withdraw. I log the timestamp of the withdrawal request and the timestamp the money lands. I keep a spreadsheet. The "instant" withdrawals advertised on landing pages are rarely instant. Some operators take twelve hours just to approve, then another three business days for the bank rail to clear. That gap matters, and it's the kind of thing you only find out by actually doing it.

I also call support. Every time. I want to know how long it takes to reach a human, whether the human knows what an AGCO inducement rule is, and whether they can answer a question about responsible gambling tools without reading from a script. Two operators in our current top 15 lost ranking positions this year because their support staff couldn't explain their own self-exclusion process.

Areas I Focus On

My specific beats inside the Hudson Casino editorial team are mobile casino apps, low-deposit and $1 deposit casinos, new operator vetting (anything launched in Canada in the last 18 months), and the comparison between regulated Ontario operators and the offshore market that still serves the rest of the country. The MGA-Canada divergence — what's legal where, what's grey, what's enforceable — is something I write about a lot, because most Canadians outside Ontario still don't have a regulated domestic option and the offshore landscape is where they actually play.

How I Rank, and What I Won't Recommend

I rank operators on five things, in this order: licensing and player protection, withdrawal speed and reliability, fairness of bonus terms, breadth of game library, and quality of support. Marketing budget does not factor in. Affiliate payout does not factor in. We disclose our affiliate relationships in the site footer because that's the honest thing to do, but no operator gets a higher position because they pay us more — and I've turned down "favorable coverage" emails from operator marketing teams enough times that they mostly stop asking after a few months.

I will not recommend any operator that doesn't carry a valid licence I can verify (iGaming Ontario for the Ontario market, recognized international regulators for the offshore market). I will not recommend operators with credible unresolved complaints about withholding withdrawals. I will not recommend any site that doesn't have working deposit limits and self-exclusion tools. These are not high bars. Most operators clear them. The ones that don't, don't make our top lists, regardless of how good their bonus structure looks.

Outside the Office

I'm a Montreal Canadiens fan living in a Maple Leafs city, which is its own kind of penance. In summer I run the Don Valley trails most weekends — usually the loop down through Crothers Woods. I taught myself enough Python during the pandemic to scrape operator terms and conditions into spreadsheets, which has saved me roughly four hundred hours of reading by now and made me marginally more insufferable at editorial meetings. I drink too much coffee from Pilot in Leslieville and I will defend Quebec-style poutine against Toronto-style at any provocation.

Get in Touch

For corrections, tips, or anything else editorial, the team can be reached at editorial@thehealthgap.ca. I read everything that comes in, even when I don't reply right away.