QE2 lottery top winners collect prizes
“I’ve got speakers in a friggin’ fire pit,” the winner of the 2018 QE2 Home Lottery exclaimed this week.
Reggie Mackinnon, his wife Marlene and their children Justin and Lorina had just toured their new abode after learning they had won the grand prize show home in the Indigo Shores at Mccabe Lake subdivision.
The new home, worth more than $1.05 million and chock full of amenities — including the wired-for-sound lakeside fire pit — was the venue as officials with the QE2 Foundation welcomed the major prize winners in this spring’s lottery for a cheque presentation celebration.
The Mackinnons’ top prize also comes with $50,000.
“I still really don’t believe it,” Mackinnon said. “I believe it a little bit more now that we’re here but I don’t win a whole lot of things.
“The QE2 lottery has been very, very good to me. Three or four years ago I won a $5,000 prize and it looks like we just won the nicest house they ever built. So they’ve been great to me and I’ll buy tick-
ets until the day I die.”
The Mackinnons have been supporting the hospital by buying tickets since the home lottery began 15 years ago. They don’t play other lotteries.
Mackinnon was working on his excavator when his wife got the call about their win. She told him he had to come home right away to watch the announcement of
the winners on the evening news.
He thought Marlene was going to pass out, but he wasn’t sure how to react himself.
“I didn’t know how to react to that because I had never won anything big in my life, ever.”
The 54-year-old is originally from P.E.I. but has lived in Hammonds Plains and Middle Sackville for 27 years.
The pair has looked over the home before. They like to take a tour of every home lottery house.
“It’s a gorgeous home,” he said. “I thought that it was gorgeous home when we first looked at it. We’ve seen pretty near all of them and this was the home that, if I was going to get a home, this was the one that I would take of all of the dream homes.”
They are not sure if they will keep it or sell it. They built the house they live in now just three years ago.
Nina Tardif won the grand prize cottage on Skipper Hill Drive in Chester. That prize comes with $15,000 and unlimited golf for a year at the Chester Golf Club.
“I was mind- blown,” Tardif said. “Someone pinch me, you know what I mean? Because I never thought in a million years that we would win this.”
Fifty- fifty add- on winner Marty Fletcher of West Gore won $608,995.
Fletcher and his wife Michelle were overjoyed to collect their winnings on Thursday. They planned to take it right to the bank and clear their mortgage.
The early bird prize winners of a Porsche Macan and island vacation were Allan and Donna Penny of Ardoise.