Retired Quebec teacher wins half of historic $80M Canadian lottery jackpot
CTV
When Bernard Morissette got a call from Loto-Quebec on Sept. 18 and was asked if he was sitting down, he had no idea what was coming his way.
When Bernard Morissette got a call from Loto-Quebec on Sept. 18 and was asked if he was sitting down, he had no idea what was coming his way.
The retired physical education teacher from Quebec's Outaouais region had just purchased a Lotto-Max ticket the day before.
It wasn't just any lottery — it was the largest-ever jackpot in Canadian history at $80 million. Two winning tickets were sold in Ontario and Quebec.
The Loto-Quebec employee on the other line asked Morissette, who is in his 80s, if he had heard that a Quebecer had one of the two winning tickets. He said no.
"Well, it's you who won in Quebec," the employee said.
"Forty million?" he replied.
"Yes, sir," she said.
The plant was expected to produce batteries for a million electric vehicles a year. Once up and running, it was supposed to create hundreds of permanent jobs in a small southeastern Ontario municipality. But two years later, spending on the construction of the Umicore plant has been delayed in what the company calls a "significant worsening of the EV market context."