Month: January 2018

Huddling Indoors

I haven’t written anything in quite a while.  That’s an opening sentence I’ve used a few times, sort of my version of ‘once upon a time.’  When I started writing this blog, I thought of it as a way to get out of my comfort zone and be a little more interactive and expressive.  I think my desire to be expressive comes in waves, and the last six months or so has been the trough between waves – the low point in the cycle.  But I think the time has come to get back out of my comfort zone and interact a little bit.

That said, I don’t really have anything pressing to say.  I’m as disgusted with Trump as I’ve always been, but I’m becoming numb to the constant bullshit and idiotic, often racist, rants.  He hasn’t accomplished anything.  The only thing he can brag about is the record high stock market, which he didn’t actually do.  If the weather is good this summer, he will probably take credit for that too, and his half wit yokel supporters will believe it.

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I’ve had my fill of winter.  It has hardly snowed or even gotten cold really, but the weather is grey and bleak and clammy.  The days are short and mostly gloomy, and I haven’t sat on my patio and had a beer in months.  We live indoors this time of year, dashing from the house to the car and back when necessary, but huddling in the warmth the vast majority of the time.  There is a little songbird that comes around in early spring.  It has a distinctive two note mating call that is the soundtrack of the season.  I have no idea what bird it is, maybe you know and could tell me?  The other day I heard the little song, so I know spring is not far off.  That first day I drive home from work with the window down and the radio on, and I get home and start the barbecue is probably only four or five weeks away now.  Hallelujah!

Burns Lake, Lottery Hotbed, Revisited

Well, it’s been six months since I lasted tallied up the 50/50 winnings in Burns Lake, BC.  As a recap, the little town of 2,000, roughly 0.05% of BC’s population, has been winning between 5 – 10% of all the BC 50/50 draws, and hauling in a small fortune.  First let’s crunch the numbers.

July ’17: 10 wins, $17,701

August: 13 wins, $31,465

September: 7 wins, $15,527

October: 7 wins, $20.906.50

November: 6 wins, $13,070.50

December: 6 wins, $16,647.

Last six months of 2017: 49 wins, $115,317.
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Grand total for the year: $202,014.

The average person in Burns Lake won $100 last year on this lottery.

I received quite a few comments on the previous blogs, mostly by people who think something shady is taking place.  I always kept away from saying I thought it was dishonest.  My position has been that there must be a huge amount of tickets sold there.  One person from Burns Lake wrote me to say there’s nothing much else to do there, and that I should concentrate on figuring out why so many million dollar jackpots get won in Ontario and Quebec.  That answer is easy: of the 36 million Canadians, about 22 million people live in those two provinces, and the winning of jackpots is distributed more or less the way you’d expect.  Burns Lake is to BC, population-wise, what Salmon Arm is to Canada.  If suddenly 7 or 8% of the 6-49 and Lotto Max jackpots were getting won in Salmon Arm, a few eyebrows would be raised, to say the least.

My question for the BC Lottery Corporation was why they aren’t printing the photos of big winners from Burns Lake like they do winners from other towns.  They used to publish a photo of anyone winning above $10,000, but now they seem content just to print the names of winners.  It was one of the first things I asked when I first wrote on this topic – is it a town-wide mania or are there a few people winning repeatedly?  Sadly (for curious people) the names of several $10,000+ winners from Burns Lake were never printed.  The only winner who got their name published was someone who lived elsewhere, but bought the ticket there.  BCLC  did write me back, but they only said the pictures and names missing was probably due to the winners not having picked their prizes up yet.  I hope the person who won $12,192 in March and never got named or photographed has picked their prize up, otherwise it will be expiring soon.

The response I got from BCLC came in October.  The woman who wrote the letter said there had been an inquiry into this situation, and that the town of Burns Lake buys between 6 and 8% of all the tickets sold in the province.  Since that matches their winning percentage, it would settle the matter.  She told me twice, in case I missed it the first time, that the numbers were drawn electronically in Kamloops and couldn’t be tampered with.  She also told me that if I wanted to know the identities of the winners, I could fill in a Freedom Of Information request, for which she sent me the link.  I stopped short of doing that.  Some kind of ‘stalker alarm’ went off in my head and I decided to let it go.  Why should I snoop on people whose only misdemeanour is being lucky?  I may reconsider, but it won’t be today.