Three people from Grande Prairie had a good Christmas this year. They each walked away with a new car from the Swan City Rotary Club’s Cars for Christmas Mega Lottery.
Unofficially, Rick Fjeld was chosen as the winner of the 2018 Nissan Qashqai SL, Tracy Evaskevich took home the 2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon and Randall Wilson received the 2019 1500 Longhorn Crew cab 4X4. A number of other people from the area took home gift cards and cash prizes.
Ticket sale numbers have not been confirmed yet but Swan City Rotary Lottery Chair Dave Cook says he’s happy with how the lottery turned out.
“We were really pleased. A little nervous in the last ten days; we were kind of behind last years pace but Grande Prairie, as usual, came together in the last ten days and we actually beat the previous year’s numbers.”
Each year the club holds the Cars for Christmas Lottery and the Cash and Camping Super Lottery. Between the two, Cook estimates the club has hit its goal of $350,000 dollars, surpassing the $245,000 raised last year.
Once the final sales numbers do come in, the money will be distributed to the community groups who helped sell tickets. After that, what’s left will go to non-profits for their projects and to the Rotary club to help with its projects such as the Terry Fox Run and the food bank drive.
Some controversy has surrounded the lottery in the last few years. Back in 2016, the draw was put on hold by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission after it found an inconsistency in drawing procedures. Despite that, Cook says he wasn’t worried going into this year’s draw.
“We have a very professional lottery manager out of Calgary; Stride has a very, very good system. It accounts for all of the tickets being electronic [and that they] are accounted for. We do receive a little bit of criticism of how come we haven’t got our official list of winners out yet and that’s because they’re doing their due diligence to make sure that the list is correct.”
The official winners’ list is expected to be released on the Cars for Christmas website next week.