January 02, 2014 - 6:47 PM
WINNIPEG - Get the heck out of Winterpeg and its windchills in the minus-30s.
That's one of the priorities on Dennis Nash's list as he celebrates winning more than $8 million on the Dec. 28 Lotto 649.
The Winnipeg man's was one of two tickets to share in the more than $16 million win — the other was sold in Calgary.
Nash says he hasn't made any big plans yet, but he'd like to pay off some bills and take a trip somewhere warm.
He says he'll also be helping out some close family and friends.
Nash says he won playing his usual collection of important numbers and dates that his father used to play.
He says he bought the ticket that morning and before he went to bed, he called the Winnipeg winning numbers telephone line to check them.
“The first three sounded familiar,” he recalled. “Then I started comparing and realized that the first five numbers matched."
That's happened before, when he won about $2,200 last February.
“Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sixth number matched, too. I couldn’t believe it!”
Initially, Nash said that he was calm. But he didn’t think he had read his ticket correctly, so he decided to call a family member.
When they looked it up online and confirmed it was a winner, Nash said he finally started to get excited.
News from © The Canadian Press, 2014