N. M. teaches grade four in Scarborough. She moved from Freetown in 2008 and had not been in the same room as her grandmother in seventeen years. That changed in March.
Freetown to Scarborough
N. M. arrived in Toronto in 2008 with one suitcase and a place at York University. She paid her way through teacher's college working evening shifts at a Tim Hortons on Sheppard, and she has taught at the same Scarborough primary school since 2014.
She sends airtime to her grandmother in Freetown every Sunday morning, before church, before the day gets away from her. It has been the same routine for seventeen years.
Fifty entries on a Saturday afternoon
She bought 50 entries on a quiet Saturday in February, on her couch, while a basketball game played in the background. She told us she does not really gamble and has not bought a lottery ticket since 2010, but the idea of getting some of her remittance fees back over time made sense to her as a teacher who watches small amounts compound.
She forgot about it for almost a week. The verification call came on Friday afternoon, just after she had finished marking a class set of spelling tests.
"The school they funded with the charity vote was my old primary. That's what made me cry."
The coincidence we did not engineer
What N. M. did not know was that the week's charity vote, which had been decided three days earlier by the previous round of voters, was already heading to a small waterfront community school outside Freetown. It happened to be her own primary school.
We only found out when she sent us a photo of herself in the same uniform, age eight, in a class of 38 children, on a Monday morning thirty years ago. She asked if we could route a portion of her own winnings to the same school as an unrestricted donation. We did.
A month under one roof
The bank wire cleared in five business days. N. M. used a chunk to bring her grandmother to Toronto for the month of June, the first time the two of them had been in the same room since N. M. left at 19. Her grandmother is 84 and had never been on a plane.
The rest of the prize is sitting in a high-interest account while N. M. decides whether to put a down payment on a small condo in Scarborough or buy a second one for her sister to live in while she finishes her own degree. She has not made up her mind yet.
Case #AM-2025-009. Bank wire cleared March 7, 2025. Draw conducted Week 9, 2025 and independently audited.
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