A BC Lotto Max winner shared the exciting news with his sister, who told him she wanted a swimming pool with his newfound fame.

Prince George’s Anthony Gartner won just over $130,000 in the Lotto Max drawing on December 3 last year.

He bought his ticket at Walmart on Southridge Avenue, but his interest was piqued when his wife told me someone had won at the Prince George.

He said: “I went to a gas station to check it, scanned it a couple of times and then took it to the clerk. He said, ‘Congratulations!’”

“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry… I felt kind of stunned that I actually won,” he recalled his initial reaction. “Words cannot describe this feeling.”

After finding out he’d won $131,378.20, he first broke the news to his sister.

He said, “She congratulated me warmly and then said, ‘By the way, I need a swimming pool’.”

Gartner plans to use part of its price to buy his brother’s car, which has been in the family for 57 years, and possibly a new home as well.

Lottery winners in BC won a whopping $891 million in 2021.

The province’s biggest winner was Christine Lauzon of Burnaby, who won $70 million in a Lotto Max draw in September despite only going to the store to buy peanuts.

Most recently, Anne Schmiedel from Summerland won $1 million and didn’t even have to pay anything for her ticket because she used her free spin on the Lotto 6/49 drawing.