Dartmouth lotto winner nearly tossed out million-dollar ticket
Bob and Joyce Waterfield have played the lottery for decades hoping to hit the jackpot.
When they finally did, they very nearly chucked their good fortune in a trash bin.
Mr. Waterfield had a list of Atlantic 6-49 winning numbers in his hands and the Dartmouth senior didn't like what he saw.
"I looked at it, I didn't have one number right. I damn near threw it away," he said Tuesday.
But luck stayed with him and his wife of 59 years.
He kept the ticket and when he got home, he checked the numbers again in the newspaper.
"I said, 'Gee, these numbers look good,' so I went back to Sobeys," where he noticed that his printout contained numbers for the Jan. 10 draw.
Small wonder his numbers didn't match: his winning ticket was for the Jan. 14 draw.
"It pays to check the dates," he said after picking up the cheque at Atlantic Lottery Corp.'s office in Burnside.
In this case, it paid $1 million.
The Waterfields have been buying tickets "since Day 1" of the lottery.
"I was just telling them, we probably just got our money back," joked the retired Exxon employee.
"Here's where all my cheques go anyway," he said, passing it over to his wife.
They plan to pay off bills and let the win "sink in a little bit" before deciding what to do with the money.
"It won't change our style of living much, we travel quite a bit," said Mrs. Waterfield, who barely seemed interested when her husband first announced they had a winning ticket.
"She said, 'Don't bother me right now, I'm making dinner,'" he said.
"I thought it was maybe $10 or something," she confessed.
The Waterfields also contribute to a pool of tickets with family members.
But this ticket - the sixth top prize awarded to date in Atlantic Canada's million-dollar draw - was their own.
Peter Parsons / Herald Photo
Atlantic 6-49 lottery winners Bob and Joyce Waterfield look at their million-dollar cheque in Dartmouth on Tuesday.
How true; never throw away
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