No. 1A pen name and a drawn character
Claire Whitlock is the name the desk is kept under. It is a pen name, not the name of a real person. The woman in the illustrations across the site is a character made for the desk, and the pictures of her are AI-generated illustrations rather than portraits.
Claire writes and checks every page of the desk. The desk itself is an independent visitor's guide to River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond and to the other casinos of Metro Vancouver, nine in all. It is not a casino, takes no bets, holds no accounts and is not paid by any venue.
No. 2What she does in the pictures
Each illustration gives Claire a small task tied to the page it sits on. You may find it a quick way to spot one useful detail.
- On each casino page, she holds a sign with that casino's distance from Richmond city centre, or with its opening hours.
- On the From YVR page, she holds a sign with the Canada Line time from the airport.
- On the home page, she points at the parking and arrival tool and holds a sign with River Rock's hours.
- On the register of all nine casinos, she points at the register table.
No. 3How hours are checked
Opening hours come from what venues and official bodies publish themselves. For River Rock, that means the resort's own site and the operator's page. Rules on age, ID and gambling in the province come from BCLC and the Province of British Columbia, and transit details come from TransLink.
The open or closed note on the desk compares the current Pacific time with the hours the venue publishes. It cannot reflect holiday changes, private events or temporary closures unless the venue has published them, so you may wish to check the venue's own site before a holiday visit.
The information on the desk was last checked in October 2026.
No. 4How places and distances are checked
Addresses and venue details are drawn from the same published sources: each venue's own site, the operator's pages, BCLC and the Province of British Columbia, with TransLink for transit.
Distances, including those on the register of nearby casinos, are measured in a straight line between two points. They are not walking or driving routes, so a journey by road or transit may be longer than the figure shown.
When sources give different figures, the desk does not choose between them. It leaves the number out, or notes that the venue publishes it.
No. 5What the desk leaves out
The desk does not claim visits, telephone calls, interviews or tests. Its pages are written from published material only.
Where sources disagree, a figure is left out rather than guessed, or the page notes that the venue publishes it. This keeps each page to what can be traced back to a published source.
There is no mailbox. If a detail on the desk differs from what a venue publishes, the venue's own site is the one to follow. The wider approach is set out on Desk standards.