The jackpot for the draw on Friday 1st May was CA$55 million. The winning numbers were 3, 12, 25, 36, 37, 42 and 49, and a single entry sold in the city of Yellowknife matched the full line.
The prize has not yet been claimed, but they have a year to come forward and the Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC) remains open despite the coronavirus pandemic.
WCLC director of communications Kevin van Egdom said: “There could be someone with a $55 million winning lottery ticket and as far as they know, it's still just a piece of paper in their wallet or in their purse or in a glove compartment somewhere.”
“The other thing we've seen is that some people when they see they've got a $55 million winning lottery ticket, they want to take some time to think, to let that settle in to think about what that means, how it's going to change their life.”
Encouraging players to check their tickets and call the lottery, van Egdom added that he was ‘very excited to find out’ who the winner was.
The latest jackpot smashes the record for the biggest payout in the Northwest Territories. The biggest prize had previously been the CA$11 million won by Barkley Heron and Ann Lepine of Fort Smith in 2007. Remarkably, Lepine went on to win another jackpot of CA$7.7 million four years later.
The jackpot had climbed so quickly back to Friday’s amount because it started at an impressive CA$39 million after it was most recently won on Tuesday 14th April. On that occasion, a player from Ontario landed a record-equalling CA$70 million.
The jackpot cap in Lotto Max is CA$70 million and has been reached twice already this year. Extra MaxMillions games are offered once the jackpot gets big, and any of these prizes that aren’t won are then rolled over and added to the next game.
The latest draw featured three MaxMillions draws offering CA$1 million each, although none of these were won. The jackpot for the next draw will therefore be CA$13 million.
