Guelph factory workers win $60M
Group had begun holding a lottery pool just weeks earlier
GUELPH — Fernando Meneses woke up one day in late December to the news that the winning ticket for the Lotto Max draw the night before had been sold in Guelph.
The draw for the Dec. 21 Lotto Max was at $60 million — the highest the national lottery goes.
Holding the ticket that he and eight of his co-workers at Comtech had each chipped in $5 to purchase at the Little Short Stop on Silvercreek Parkway, Meneses knew he had to see if it was a big winner.
And when he went to go scan the ticket, he could not believe what it said — he and his coworkers were set for life.
“So I went to scan it again, it said “gagneaux,” big winner, I couldn’t believe it. I scanned it five more times,” he said Thursday morning in Toronto, where he and his newly minted multimillionaire friends were collecting their winnings.
Seven members of the group live in Guelph while the other two — Ala Hirmiz and Bassam Abdi — live in Kitchener.
The routine of buying tickets for the group was a new one, having only started six weeks earlier, with one of the winners, Ala Hermiz, saying they would only buy tickets for the big draws — “$50 million and up,” he says.
Meneses made a call to Hermiz to let him know the good news.
“He said, ‘You sure you checked it?’ ” Meneses said, adding that he at first thought the group had won $6,000 — not $60 million.
Hermiz adds that when he found out the ticket was the big winner, he decided then and there that he was going to quit his job.
“It was the big one. So I said, ‘That’s it, bye,’ ” he said with a laugh.
“We talked to our supervisor, let him know of the situation. We let him know that we can’t come back. Fifteen years working there, it’s not something easy to leave.”
From there, the phone calls went to all the members of the group. Some had been playing since the group started, while others like Mussie Kelete and Ella Nicole Cabrera were firsttime buyers.
They originally planned to all meet in a Tim Hortons parking lot to figure out their game plan, but later moved to the picnic tables at Riverside Park.
“We had a nice conversation, and from there we decided to go forward with whatever we had to do next,” Steven Rush says, adding that the group decided to wait until after the holidays to claim the prize.
“It was a beautiful Christmas.” So now the question is what will the group do with their newly won millions.
Hermiz, who has worked on the line at Comtech for 15 years, says it’s too early to ask that. “I’m not ready yet,” he said. “I’m just going to stay home, I need that peace. Maybe in a month, I’ll decide what I’m going to do. But for sure, I’m going to stay home.”
Mercedes Granadino, meanwhile, says she has started looking at houses and is deciding which one she wants to buy. “Now I can dream,” she added. Of the nine winners, eight are immigrants to Canada, coming from parts of the Middle East, southeast Asia and Africa. Some have been in the country for years, while Bassam Abdi has been here for under a year.
Hermiz said immigrants who come to Canada dream of becoming rich, and making a better life for them and their families — exactly what has happened for him and his co-workers.
“This is one of the dreams, that we’re going to the land to be rich,” he said. “And it’s come true.”
So I went to scan it again, it said ‘gagneaux,’ big winner, I couldn’t believe it. I scanned it five more times.
FERNANDO MENESES
Lottery winner