GREENSTONE — It was only ten o'clock, so Joel Letourneau was surprised to get a call from the Health Sciences North Foundation asking if he had purchased a ticket in the Sudbury hospital's 50/50 cash lottery.
"Are you serious?...I thought you guys called around 11 o'clock," he told Shane Gordon, manager of lottery and websites for the foundation.
Gordon replied "I'm dead serious," adding that he always phones the monthly grand prize winner at 10 a.m.
He then went on to inform Letourneau he and the other members of a group who buy tickets together would be sharing $432,700.
"Hold on. I've gotta write this down because I've gotta tell the boys here...Can you say the number again? Awesome. Holy moly!"
Letourneau said he and ten other employees at Equinox Gold's Greenstone mine have been purchasing tickets in multiple lotteries for the past two years, but this is the first time they've won anything substantial.
He speculated "The guys are never going to believe this...They're all going to think I'm messing with them."
In an interview Tuesday with Newswatch, Letourneau said the group includes workers from two different crews at the mine, so he had to arrange to get everyone's signature, which is required for the payout.
"We don't always see each other, but what's funny is I got half the signatures this morning, and I just met the other half of the group that's not working this week, at the golf club here in Geraldton...We're working on a photo for the group of us right now."
He expects everyone will have different plans for their winnings.
"It helps out, you know, with family bills and renovations, or going on a trip or doing something you wouldn't be able to do for yourself before we won the money. So it's really, really good."
Letourneau said the miners also support other hospital lotteries across Northern Ontario, including the Thunder Bay 50/50 and fundraisers for hospitals in Dryden, Kenora, Sault Ste. Marie, and North Bay.
