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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.... huh?

Winning ticket sold for $54 million prize
Last Updated Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:31:58 EDT
CBC News

A winning ticket was sold for Wednesday night's record-setting 6/49 lottery - and the top prize is worth more than $50 million.

According to the Loto-Quebec web site one ticket was sold with the winning numbers, somewhere on the Prairies, and the ticket is worth much more than the $40 million estimate. It's worth $54,294,712.00.

Although Wednesday night's Lotto 6/49 draw has come and gone the question now is who is the lucky individual or group with the winning ticket and when will the rest of the country find out who holds the winning numbers.

Before Wednesday's draw the lineups were long in every part of the country. In the past four days, Canadians have spent an amazing $90 million on 6/49 tickets.

Peter Low, who owns a lottery ticket centre in Vancouver says he's never seen anything like it. "it has been on-going, non-stop," said Low. "I think today will be the busiest day we've ever had."

On Toronto's Bay Street, where the nation's financial wizards make the calculations and take the risks that shape the entire country's economy, sales were brisk.

Investment researchers Richard Wong and Jason Stu were caught in the act. When asked if they thought they were making a good investment, they said, "Not really."

But like millions of other Canadians they just couldn't miss out on an opportunity at $40 million. Abdul Alladin who runs a ticket kiosk says regular customers are buying 10 times as many tickets and the employees of some brokerage firms are going even bigger.

"I had one customers say they are collecting $100 from everyone in their office. They're going to collect $5,000 just from their office alone [for lottery tickets]," said Alladin.

It seems when it comes to lottery fever, Bay Street is the same as any other street in Canada. People want to buy a piece of a fantasy.

An Edmonton man has a strategy. "If I win I'd take my family and disappear," he says.

In Goose Bay, Labrador, people are "very excited."

In Ottawa one man says he's "promised all my friends we'd go to Paris for lunch."

But not everyone is enthralled with the lottery madness. Sean Villeneuve, a ticket store owner in Montreal says he hopes it ends soon.

"Well the most annoying thing is I guess are the people who say 'I want the winning ticket.' I love that one because I would love it too. I would want the winning ticket and yet they think they're special."

The chances of winning were estimated at 1 in 14 million - and someone managed to pull it off. "I would imagine the sales will be somewhere around 25 to 30 million in terms of number of tickets," said Jeff Schultz of the B.C. Lottery Corporation.

About 29 per cent of the money goes to provincial governments. A further 18 per cent is split between operating costs, payments to sellers and the federal government.

Those are the only numbers that are guaranteed- every week.