Scott Ennis was at work in St. John’s when he found out he’d won $5 million.
An email from Atlantic Lottery had arrived the morning after the Aug. 26 draw. He assumed it was a small prize and didn’t check the amount.
Then he heard co-workers talking about a $5-million winner somewhere in Newfoundland.
He went to his cubicle and opened his ticket history on his phone.
“It started going with confetti and said ‘$5 million,’ and I just sat there, didn’t make a sound,” Ennis said in an Oct. 29 statement from Atlantic Lottery.
He had a meeting in five minutes. He never made it.
Ennis told his manager something personal had come up and asked his wife, Susan Avery, to meet him in the parking lot.
She knew the moment she saw him.
“He was grinning but was emotion-filled, like his eyes just kind of filled,” she said.
The couple had won the $5-million Lotto 6/49 Classic Jackpot. Neither of them is quitting.
Why they’re keeping their jobs
Ennis and Avery say they’ll keep working for the next few years and invest a large share of the money. The goal is to retire a few years from now instead of right away.
They also plan to help loved ones, renovate their home, buy a new vehicle and take a family trip.
“We knew it was going to change our lives, but also our daughters’ lives,” Avery said.
Atlantic Lottery hasn’t released their ages or jobs, how much they plan to invest, or when they expect to retire.
What research says about winners and work
Economists have studied what people actually do when a windfall makes work optional, using employment and tax records instead of anecdotes.
One of the largest studies, by David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Matthew Notowidigdo and Robert Östling, followed 249,278 Swedish lottery players. It was published in the American Economic Review.
Winning did reduce how much people earned from work, but by less than you might expect given the prize. For every 100,000 Swedish kronor won, annual earnings fell by about 1,150 kronor in the year of the win.
The drop lasted at least a decade. Some winners cut their hours. Some became less likely to hold a job. Few changed occupations, employers or workplaces. Spouses cut back too, though less than the winners did.
The study can’t predict what any one winner will do, and many of the Swedish prizes were much smaller than $5 million. What it shows is that sudden wealth doesn’t usually mean walking out the door.
Do lottery winners pay income tax in Canada?
Not on the prize.
The Canada Revenue Agency doesn’t count lottery winnings as income you have to report, whatever the amount. The couple’s $5 million isn’t subject to income tax.
What the money earns is a different story. Interest on investments bought with lottery winnings is generally taxable. Dividends and realized capital gains can be too, depending on the investment and the account it’s held in. Registered accounts like a Tax-Free Savings Account are treated differently.
For a couple planning to invest most of their winnings, that’s the part that will matter on their tax returns for years.
Where Atlantic Lottery’s money goes
The announcement came eight days after Atlantic Lottery released its annual results.
On Oct. 21, the publicly owned corporation said it returned $492 million in net profit to the four Atlantic provinces in the 2025-26 fiscal year:
Nova Scotia: $164.5 million
Newfoundland and Labrador: $152.8 million
New Brunswick: $148.9 million
Prince Edward Island: $25.8 million
The corporation says the money helps pay for public services such as health care, education and infrastructure.
That $492 million didn’t come from Lotto 6/49 alone. It comes from all of Atlantic Lottery’s gambling operations, including retail lottery, video lottery terminals and online gambling. Profit was down slightly from about $498.8 million the year before. The corporation paid out $455.7 million in prizes during the year.
Winner stories like this one are the public face of that business. The annual report shows the scale behind it.
The rest stays private
The couple haven’t shared how they’ll invest the money or named a retirement date, and they’ve kept their daughters’ identities private.
For now the plan is simple: keep working, help family, fix up the house and retire in a few years.
It started with an email Ennis almost ignored and a meeting he never made it to. Two months later, they’re both still going to work.
Gambling can cause financial and other harms. Free, confidential support is available in Newfoundland and Labrador by calling 811.
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