Toronto Getting Rid Of An Old Nightlife Restriction On Its Bars

By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Nightlife Blogger

I have been to Toronto many times and found its nightlife to be fun and outstanding. Little did I know, tho, that I was missing out on one element of entertainment in bars.

Apparently, there is an old city law dating back to the 1960s restricting the number of arcade and pinball machines in a bar at two. This seems a triffle odd to me because I spent many of the early bar evenings playing the auto racing video game at Montana’s, one of a cluster of bars downtown on and around John Street.

I also clearly remember going into a bar around the corner at Adelaide and Duncan that was nothing but pinball machines and arcade games before getting smashed across the street at the Crocodile Rock bar (now closed, sadly, a casualty of the pandemic).

At any rate, there is such a law, although the city is recending that law as part of a broader inter-divisional Night Economy Review. The rule is Zoning By-Law No. 438-86, which specifies that “only two pinball or other mechanical or electronic game machines is permitted in a ‘restaurant’ or a ‘place of amusement.'”

Perhaps because the bars I went to were downtown instead of in a neighborhood, they were exempt from Zoning By-Law No. 438-86, but I can’t say for sure. Anyway, it will now be legal for a bar or restaurant to have more than two such machines so people can play PacMan, Pop-A-Shot and, ideally, those cool auto racing games.