Calgary man finally claims $70 million lottery prize

A man in Calgary has finally come forward to claim Alberta’s largest Lotto Max winnings.

The prize is tied for the largest Lotto Max win in Canada. Mitchell Dyck, a Calgary landscaping company owner, says “It has not sunk in yet, but it’s getting there.”

“I’ve been buying tickets for my whole adult life,” Dyck said from the Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) office in Calgary. “I didn’t have a set number. And I didn’t have an expectation to win. I had a dream to win. End of the day the dream came true I guess.”

The ticket had gone unclaimed for weeks.

Dyck says he buys tickets when he fills up his car with gas two to three times a week, especially when there is a “big lotto.”

However, he says he was preoccupied when he bought the winning ticket, and didn’t realize how big the jackpot was.

“I just grabbed one so that I could have a chance at winning,” Dyck said.

Dyck says he forgot about the would-be-winning ticket, not realizing his numbers were drawn on Oct. 21. He says he only remembered he had some tickets in his truck when he went in to buy more at a later date.

His life changed when he brought the ticket into a Circle K in Tuscany.

“It was so surreal,” he said of the moment he realized he won.

Initially, he says he thought the winnings were $70,000, adding he just noticed the “70” on the receipt. That feeling of potentially winning that much money gave him goosebumps, and he was “freaking out.”

“But when I found out it was $70 million, it’s taking it to a whole other level,” Dyck said. “It is so incredible. So incredible.”

Nerves and excitement over Alberta lotto win

Dyck says he got a little nervous when the cashier went to confirm the prize.

“[The cashier] started walking off with the ticket towards the back, towards his manager I guess. And I was like, ‘where are you going with my ticket?'” Dyck recalled.

When speaking with the manager of the Circle K, Dyck says they could not read what the ticket said, saying “it had so many zeros.”

“It’s almost unfathomable,” Dyck said. “Who would ever think $70 million? I was thinking $7 million at most when I started focusing in, but I was starting to lose sight of it. It was getting a lot blurrier the longer I held it.”

Soon he was talking with a representative for the AGLC to confirm his winnings.

He says he waited three hours for his wife to come home before he told her the life-changing news.

“I just had to kind of confirm that she was definitely in love with me and wanted to stay married with me,” Dyck joked to a laughing crowd. “And when she answered all those questions properly, I showed her the ticket and watched her cry.”

Despite having the largest Lotto Max winning ticket in the province ever, Dyck says the last two weeks have been “anxiety-ridden.”

“I don’t know if stress is the right word, but you’re just … hoping and praying … that’s how much you win. And then when you actually find out it is, especially with this amount of money … it feels like a huge responsibility immediately.”

Worried that someone would get word of his winnings and try to steal the ticket, he put it into a safe-deposit box at his local bank.

A week later, when Dyck handed the receipt in to claim his prize in St. Albert, he admits the drive there wasn’t “according to the speed limit.”

“I was thinking if I got pulled over, then I’d be able to tell the kindly RCMP officer that I might need a bit of a chaperone the rest of the way,” he said.

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Dyck says the only person who was skeptical at first was his father, who did come around after he realized Dyck wasn’t “pulling his leg.” He says his whole family has been very supportive.

“Everybody’s so happy. And it’s hard to believe that that kind of money is now in the family. So I just wanted everybody to know that … it’s going to go to a good place,” Dyck said.

He and his wife have thought about what they want to do with the win long-term but plan to keep it low-key for now with a holiday for Christmas.

“Who doesn’t want a fancy car, fancy truck and fancy house and those kinds of things? But we’re going to put the money in the bank,” Dyck said. “It’s a huge amount of money, so we have to be responsible and think about what we’re going to do with it and what’s the best way to help other families.”

He also says he doesn’t want his kids to lose sight of their goals, adding they aren’t going to make changes to their lifestyle.

“To quote Shaquille O’Neal, we told our kids that, ‘You don’t get to touch my cheese until you have two degrees,'” Dyck said. “We can’t just up and leave. We have to live our everyday lives and carry on as before and try to keep as close to the ground as we can.

“It’s an enormous amount of money that I’m sure it will change the way we go about things, but I don’t want it to change us,” he added.

The winning numbers were: 01, 09, 25, 35, 41, 43, and 50. Bonus: 40