Although $100,000 richer, life hasn’t changed much since Geoff Fox won the lottery.
The local bartender extraordinaire is still working at the Whistle Stop, slinging beers and making people laugh, and this summer he still plans to mark his 18th season as a raft guide.
Really, all that’s changed is he’s no longer paying off old travel debts and he has a chunk of change in the bank that he one day hopes to turn into a downpayment on a house.
Otherwise, he’s just the same old “Foxy” and that’s the way he likes it.
Fox found out he had a winning ticket in February, just three hours before he had to work. He was at Tags, picking up a loaf of bread and was planning on heading home to make a sandwich and drink a cup of coffee before his shift.
While he was there he pulled out some old lottery tickets and started scanning them through the self-checker. Then, suddenly, one ticket—a Lotto Max with an Extra—came up as a winner.
“I’m still grasping the situation,” said Fox more than a month after he saw a one followed by five zeroes scroll across the screen.
When he went home that day, he was so amped that he couldn’t sit down. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself—other than call his mom, of course.
She was in the middle of a game of Bridge with her girlfriends and excitedly yelled out to her friends: “My son just won the lottery!”
That evening, Fox went to work and already the word had spread and people were congratulating him.
He admitted the onslaught of attention has given him a bit of anxiety, but he said he greatly appreciates the community’s enthusiasm and support.
To redeem his winnings, he travelled to the lottery office in St. Albert with his brother Chris.
“The first thing my brother says when we walk in is, ‘this must be the most happy office in the world.’”
But, even in that moment, Fox couldn’t relax. He thought at any second something was going to go wrong and his winnings would be taken out from under him.
Nervously standing in the lottery office, he answered what seemed like an endless stream of questions and provided his ID, and finally he was congratulated.
“It was awesome when I finally got the cheque,” he said. He took it straight to TD Bank and told the teller to pay off his Visa.
The remainder of the money has been tucked away in mutual funds and a tax-free savings account, both administered by his brother, who’s a financial planner.
“Most of it’s for the future,” he said. “So, nothing much has changed.”
Nicole Veerman
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