Canadian lottery does not have the history that some other national histories do. And when we talk about lottery in general, it is actually quite difficult to make any conclusive deductions until relatively recently when the governments started getting involved in organizing the lottery. The lack of documented records prevents us from knowing too much about the history of lottery in Canada before the 20th century. However, it can safely be concluded that the people in Canada enjoyed different kinds of lotteries long, long before.
The point in time from which we can follow the history of Canadian lottery are the 1960s. Namely, in 1967, a bill was passed called the Omnibus bill which, among other things, started to bring some regulation in the world of gambling which was hitherto quite an unknown with too many legal dilemmas and inconsistencies. A man called Pierre Elliot Trudeau was behind this bill, at the time filling the role of the Minister of Justice.
About hat same time, the World Fair was held in Montreal and there was also the introduction of the subway system in that city. Of course, both of these events were extremely expensive and there was a need for some way of covering for at least some part of those expenses. This lead the mayor of Montreal at the time, Jean Drapeau, to come up with a way to get the money and it included a lottery draw. Namely, $2 tickets were sold and the prize pool was $100,000 big. This meant that you could win some money but that most people would not. Still, it was a great way to finance the expenditures.
This lead to some very serious legal battles, with Drapeau defending the stance and the ultimate result was that the government of Canada finally declared lotteries legal in 1969. As you can see, not that long ago. It goes without saying that it did not take too long for the first provincial lottery to appear and it did in 1971 in Quebec. Other provinces followed in suite and in the 1980s, Lotto 6/49 was first organized and it became the first national lottery in Canada. Lotto Super Max, now known as Lotto Max was the second national lottery to be organized and these two are still going strong to this day.
It may not be the longest of lottery histories, but it is ours and we need to know stuff about it.