Tom Crist

Tom Crist, a Calgary businessman who had just retired after 44 years in electrical wholesaling, won the C$40 million Lotto Max jackpot in the draw of 3 May 2013 — the largest prize ever paid to a Calgarian at that point. He held a Lotto Max subscription, so the Western Canada Lottery Corporation phoned him with the result; he took the call on a golf course in Palm Springs, California. "We finished our lunch, we went out golfing," he said. He told nobody, not even his children, until he claimed the prize in December 2013 wearing sunglasses, and announced that he would give away every dollar through a family foundation. "I've been very fortunate prior to this $40 million dollars with the company I was with, so I'm very lucky, very fortunate, so I can look after myself," he said. His first gift, C$1.2 million, went to the Alberta Cancer Foundation, which supports Calgary's Tom Baker Cancer Centre, where his wife Jan was treated before she died of cancer in 2012 after 33 years of marriage. He named Big Brothers Big Sisters and Ronald McDonald House among intended future recipients.

By April 2014 Crist had made the C$1.2 million Alberta Cancer Foundation gift, formally established the Crist Family Foundation in March 2014, and put a multi-million-dollar investment into the children's streaming service Kidoodle.TV, arguing the foundation needed investment returns to keep giving: "In order for that foundation to go on for years and years, there has to be a return." He also supplied Kidoodle.TV subscriptions to families with children in medical treatment. No later public accounting of the remaining prize is documented.